All the Freedom in the World
by Octo8
Summary: A Rebuild 2.0 fic: She told him he had all the freedom in the world. He told her he would pilot for her one more time. Now, he draws the consequence: Shinji quits piloting. But that isn't the end of his story.
1. One More Time

"Ohhhh. Making sure Rei is _alright_ I see." Misato had that usual teasing voice about her. _Already. As if nothing happened yesterday._ "How noble of you, Shinji." She grinned. "Yes, somebody should _look after her._ Girls appreciate that!"

Shinji smiled weakly. It appeared that would be his new normal now. Misato had been right the previous day, after all. He _had_ in fact agreed to be a pilot. So what did he expect now? Of course Misato would treat him piloting as just being normal. It was now, as was her teasing and joking. Shinji didn't like it, but that was life. One could only hope things didn't get even worse.

At least, this did get him into the NERV hospital. The gigantic building, rising up high into the sky, made Shinji uncomfortable. That was where he had ended up the previous day. And that was where Misato had talked him into piloting again. Now it seemed like a done deal. _I don't like this place._

Last time he had been here, he had had no chance to see the hospital's entrance. He furrowed his brows. It was large and filled with light, with several small, potted palms all around. An aromatic scent was in the air, and the sun created a glasshouse effect that was not uncomfortable. Glass, green and electronics – NERV HQ was the same way. It all _looked_ light and good on the surface…

All Misato needed to do at the reception was to flash her NERV card. The receptionist, an eager-looking young woman with a very artful top knot hairstyle, pointed them to where they needed to go. Suprisingly, on the way there, in a corridor, they encountered Ritsuko. As always, the scientist was wearing a white labcoat.

Misato looked surprised for a moment and then came to a halt in front of her friend. Shinji was just trotting along behind her, his head held low. "Ritsuko," Misato greeted her friend. "I didn't expect to see you here."

The faux-blonde shrugged. "Maintaining the First Child's health is one of my obligations." She smiled, though it was a dismissive smile. _Arrogant, somehow._ "So you've come to see her? I must admit, _that_ surprised _me._ "

"She was injured," Shinji merely stated. He didn't know what more there was to say.

"So she was," Ritsuko simply answered.

"In the battle. Where she was together with me," Shinji added. "She… protected me. Just as she said she would."

Ritsuko paused for a moment. "She said that? My, that's interesting. If that keeps up, our Rei will turn into a veritable butterfly. So go ahead. She's awake and doing well. Most of the damage was merely sympathetic pain, anyway. Mostly, she's just exhausted. We'll probably let her go home tomorrow."

 _'Just' sympathetic pain. Easy for you to say._ But with that, without saying another word, Ritsuko passed the two, leaving them with long steps. Both Misato and Shinji watched her go for a moment, then continued on their way – not that it was a long distance anymore. Soon, they both stood in front of an unmarked door.

Misato smiled warmly at Shinji. "Go inside. You're right, you two fought together. You should have a moment. I'll wait here."

The room was spacious, with one side consisting entirely of a large window front. There was a small drawer with a TV on it in one corner, and yet another potted palm in another. But it was still a hospital room. The curtains had been drawn shut all over the window front, and yet it was uncomfortably warm, and a slight smell of disinfectant hung in the air. Also, the walls were all barren, and the single bed in the room made it abundantly clear where they were: It was a typical, mobile hospital bed, with railings at the sides. A small chair stood next to it.

Rei was sitting upright in the bed, looking right ahead. Shinji's gaze rested on her for a while. Her skin was really abnormally pale, but also smooth, almost like a new statue. And those red eyes…

She turned her head to face him. Shinji gulped and closed the door behind him. "A-Ayanami. I… ah, I came here to, uh, to visit you, I guess. Are you alright?" He suddenly became aware that he had brought no present or anything. _I should have brought flowers. It would only have been polite. I'm so inconsiderate!_ Heat rushed into his face.

"Dr Akagi said I'll be sent home tomorrow," Rei told him in her usual monotonous voice.

"That's good," Shinji commented. He tried a smile while slowly approaching the bed, but he wasn't sure it was a success.

"Why are you here?" Rei asked. There was no inflection in her voice; it sounded like a factual question.

"Uh, as I've said," Shinji answered. "To visit you. To see how you are."

Rei nodded. "I'll be functional by the next synch-test."

Again, Shinji furrowed his brows. That just sounded wrong, on a level he couldn't quite express. "Why are you saying 'functional'?"

"Should I say something else?" Rei asked.

"Well…" Shinji thought so, but he wasn't sure _what._ He wasn't sure what he had expected. "I'm more interested in how you're feeling." He paused. "Uh. I mean. If it's okay for me to ask." He feared he had overstepped a boundary.

There was a long pause. _I have._ Shinji turned around to leave. _I have screwed up again._ That was fairly unsurprising.

"I don't understand." Shinji stopped. As always, Rei's voice had been soft and quiet, but it was enough.

He turned around again. "What do you mean?"

"I don't understand the nature of your question," Rei said matter-of-factly. "I will be functional. What else is important to you?"

Again, Shinji struggled. Again, his face felt hot. _I mustn't run away…_ But he didn't quite know how to put it, how to… "You."

There was a silence. That was not quite how Shinji had wanted to say it.

"I'm important to Commander Ikari," Rei finally said. "Am I also important to you?"

The mere mention of his father made Shinji frown. He didn't know what there was between Rei and the Commander, why she was his father's ward, but he didn't like it. Gendo Ikari had abandoned him years ago, and now had only recalled him so he would suffer. Meanwhile, in all that time, Rei had been a bright spot here in Tokyo-3. The one person who had never hurt him and with whom he had never screwed up. He didn't want the association with his father to tarnish this bright spot.

"I… I think you are," Shinji answered softly, struggling through his embarrassment. "It just didn't feel right how my father wanted to use you, even though you were injured and in pain. And then, on Mount Futago, you protected me, as you had said you would."

Rei looked down. Her skin was now not as pale before. There was a… _Is that a blush?_ Shinji didn't know how to feel about it. It made him blush in return. Rei looked… lovely.

"Ayanami?" Shinji prompted after a while.

"You're making me feel embarrassed," Rei told him softly.

 _Oh._ Shinji looked down.

"I wasn't injured anymore," Rei said after some seconds of silence.

Shinji looked up again, slightly confused. "Sorry?"

"I could have piloted Unit 01," Rei explained.

That made Shinji feel bad. It was irrational, but he felt guilty. Rei had been burdened with EVA all this time, alone. He had taken over for her in the last three battles, but that was only a recent development. Before, he hadn't even known about any of this, and yet…

"You didn't need to," Rei continued.

 _Oh._ Suddenly, Shinji's body went stiff. He realized now what Rei was saying.

"But what about you?" Shinji asked, almost protested.

"Piloting is my bond to the world," Rei explained. "You have people around you, like Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi. Why do you pilot?"

Shinji opened his mouth, then closed it again. He smiled sadly, then sat down. "I… I can't tell you, Ayanami. I don't know."

Why did he? Piloting was terrible and frightening and painful. While his classmates had nothing to worry about except homework, marks and gossip, he was fighting lethal, painful battles. He was saving them all and then went back to school as if nothing had happened. His father didn't even see him, and Misato wasn't praising him – she had even shouted at him after the second angel. So why _did_ he pilot?

"Piloting lets me do something," Rei spoke up. "When I pilot, I am connected to the world."

""Connected?" Shinji asked.

"Like this talk," Rei answered, which was no explanation at all for Shinji.

So all he could do was to speak about his own experiences. "It's terrible. All that pain… and I don't even know what an Evangelion is. It feels… you know, I dream of it. That feeling I have when I'm synched to the Evangelion. Like I can't get rid of it."

"Did you 'dream' of it this night?" Rei asked.

Shinji shook his head and then buried it in his hands. Truth be told, he hadn't slept much at all last night, with the memory of the fight still fresh in his head – the terror of facing the angel again, the pain of having been boiled alive. It had been a huge wave of after-the-fact fear rolling over him.

"Does that happen to you as well?" he finally asked back, looking up again.

"I don't dream," Rei told him. She looked down at him, directly in his eyes.

 _Oh._ That sounded odd to Shinji, but he didn't inquire further. After all, it wasn't like he was dreaming every night, and besides, those eyes…

He gulped. "You can't be burdened with everything. Doing all those tests, fighting the angels, all that alone…"

She shook her head. "It isn't a burden. It's all I have." There was a sudden, heavy sadness in Shinji's heart. _How can piloting be all she has? Something so terrible? Who_ is _she? "_ Is the same true for you?"

Shinji felt restless. He didn't know how to answer it, and yet at the same time, it seemed like an eye-opener to him - like something he _had_ to act on. _Is the same true for me? Who am I?_ He couldn't just idly sit here with those thoughts in his head.

He stood up. "Ah, I'm sorry, Ayanami. I'll..." He backed off from the bed slightly. "I'll be seeing you. And, ah… I hope you get better." He turned around and walked. "I think you've helped me!" he said as he opened the door and walked out.

He knew this wasn't the most polite thing to do, not even the friendliest, but he just needed… he was full of energy now, energy to _do_ something. His whole situation seemed uncomfortable now, and that discomfort called for fixing.

Misato looked at him in surprise as he hastened out of the room, but then simply followed him, not saying a word.

On the way back to the apartment, Shinji felt his feeling of unrest, of activity, fizzle. He sat in the passenger seat in the blue Alpine Renault, and looked out of the window. The sun was setting, spreading its orange light over the busy city. Tokyo-3 was an _incredibly_ densely built city, with people and traffic everywhere. A cacophony of noise, muffled by the window, reached him, but he couldn't focus on it. He looked outside, and felt… discontent.

 _Connection to people?_ Right now, Shinji felt more disconnected from the world outside the window than ever. _They have no idea. None of them._ They all lived on, while he suffered – they could live on _because_ he suffered. He felt lonely. That he sat next to Misato only made this worse.

On the way back up to the apartment, he again trotted behind her, with his head held low. The first thing the Lieutenant Colonel did upon entering the house was to open the fridge and take out a can of beer.

She opened it with a loud _psssh_ sound. "It's good to see that Rei is on the way up, isn't it, Shinji?" She looked to the kitchen entrance, where Shinji was still standing. "No harm done." _Easy for you to say._ "We can all get to the synch-test tomorrow..."

Shinji looked straight down. His hands were curled into fists. "I'm not going."

"What do you mean?" Misato asked. It still sounded cheerful. "Don't you want to…"

"I'm not going!" Shinji repeated, louder this time.

"Uh… okay," Misato answered. "Any reason for that?"

"I won't pilot anymore," Shinji stated. There, he had said it. He felt dizzy.

Misato walked over to the kitchen table and put – no, _slammed_ her can onto its top. Beer foam came running out of it. "You agreed to pilot! You said…"

Shinji now looked right at her, anger on his face. "I said I would pilot one more time! And I have! Isn't that enough?"

Misato just looked back at him, her face all stern and grim. "You now know what is on the line! And yet you'd just leave?"

Shinji did know. In a way, that made it all even worse. He felt _trapped,_ trapped by circumstances. And Misato… he remembered what she had said. He felt resentful about both.

He took a few steps forwards. "You told me I have all the freedom in the world! Was that a lie?"

Shinji looked at Misato. The woman seemed shocked for a moment. Then her face went dark. And Shinji got terrified. What he had just said went through his head again. _I've fucked up. Again._ He felt terrible and selfish. Without another word, he began running – past Misato, up to his room. He just threw himself onto his futon and buried his face in it.

For what might have been hours, he just lay there, in the darkness after the sun had set, with only the pale light of the lampposts outside entering his room, lost in his dark thoughts. He was a failure, he was sure of that. Back when he had been living with his tutor, he had had no friends and had found no recognition. And now that he had found a special talent, something only he could do, it had turned out to be a burden too great for him. Though… it wasn't a talent, not really. Misato had told him so herself. It was just fate that he could pilot, just bad luck. It was a curse, truly. And he was done with it. He felt bad about that, but he would not go back to piloting. He had told Misato he would pilot one more time, and that was exactly what he had done^.

There was a knock at the door. He didn't answer it. After a few seconds, the door was slid open by some centimetres. Light fell into the room. Misato spoke through through the slit.

"We should talk." There was concern, but also a hard edge to her voice.

Shinji remained silent. _There is nothing to talk about._ He would leave, no matter what arguments Misato used. She had always pushed him and pressured him into piloting, and he was done with that. He should never have agreed to stay after his father had shanghaied him into this whole mess. But he couldn't tell Misato any of this. He didn't feel he had the right to. He was running away again, after all.

"Shinji..." Misato tried again.

Shinji wrapped his pillow around his head. Couldn't she just leave him alone? Hadn't he done _enough_ already? Hadn't he already let himself be beaten repeatedly by the first angel, whipped by the second angel, boiled alive by the third angel? Couldn't the woman _see_ all that? Shinji _knew_ it was pathetic to run, but… _Why does the world expect so much of me?_ He desperately wished for a nicer, softer world. A world that would leave him alone.

"Is this your final decision?" Misato asked. "To abandon us?"

For a long while, Misato just stood there, just outside the door, while Shinji lay on his futon. Neither side spoke, neither side moved. Finally, in a low, hoarse mutter, Shinji answered, "You wanted me to decide for myself. You said I should want to pilot or leave. And now that I have decided…"

Again a long pause. Finally, Misato told him in a hard voice, "Now that you've made your decision, we need to discuss what it means. Please come to the kitchen. I'll make us some tea."

The door was slid shut again. The room fell dark once more. Shinji lay there and felt miserable. He just wanted to leave. He didn't want to confront his decision. But he also couldn't stay in this room forever. Sooner or later, he would have to come out.

His knees shook when he stood up. He closed his eyes and breathed out. Then he slid the door open once more and stepped out of his room. He could smell the promised tea from the kitchen.

Misato stood at the kitchen counter, facing away from the table and the door. She held her left elbow in her right hand, and seemed lost in thought. Not really daring to enter, Shinji just stood in the kitchen doorway.

Without turning around, Misato ordered, "Sit."

Shinji did as he was told. There was a mug of steaming tea in front of him; peppermint, by the smell of it. Finally, Misato turned around, still holding her elbow.

"You know now why NERV exists," she began. "You know we're defending the world. And yet you still wish to leave?"

Shinji's hands grabbed the tea mug, feeling its warmth. He kept his head low and simply looked deep into that mug. Finally, he muttered, "You already knew that before."

"Yes," Misato simply answered.

"So did you lie?" Shinji asked without looking up. When there was no answer, he continued, "When you told me I needed to decide for myself to pilot? When you said what mattered was what I wanted?" Now he looked up with furrowed brows, and began to speak louder. "When you said I have all the freedom in the world?"

Misato turned her head sidewards. "I..." Her voice became lower. "I wanted…"

She stood leaning against the counter, looking away. Shinji sat at the table, looking down. Both remained so, still and silent.

Finally, still facing away from him, Misato's voice became harder. "I didn't tell you before, because… well, the information was classified, but also to protect you. People can only remain innocent for as long as they remain ignorant. Once they know, once they really know, all the responsibility is theirs; they cannot be innocent any longer. Back then, you did have all the freedom in the world. But now… now that you know…"

Shinji's shoulders slumped. He knew what this meant. He realized he shouldn't have expected any different. There just was no getting out of this for him. He was _condemned_ to his fate. "So you'll force me," he whispered.

From the corner of his eyes, Shinji saw Misato's body flinch. Slowly, the Lieutenant Colonel walked up to the table and sat down. She still didn't look Shinji in the face. "I… if piloting is really nothing but pain for you…"

Now Shinji looked up. He sounded desperate. "Of course it is! It isn't something that could ever come to me naturally. That… whatever the EVA is… when I connect with it, it stays in my mind. It's cold and alien and..." He stopped, and formed his two hands on the table into fists. "And I get bludgeoned and whipped and boiled. And the fear. That fear and panic before every battle, and during it, and even after it…" His voice broke. His eyes grew watery. "And nobody seems to care. Of all my classmates only I… and nobody even thanks me. Pain is all I get out of piloting."

"Shinji..." Misato whispered.

"All I can expect in piloting is negative things," Shinji muttered, his voice somewhat calmed dow again, he being back to his usually depressed mumbling. "Just pain and fear. When I succeed, nobody even mentions that, it's just taken for granted, but when I fail you shout at me. I need to make an effort just so no bad things happen, and good ones never do."

For a moment, it seemed like a mask slipped from Misato, as for just that second Shinji could see her wince. She caught herself quickly, but even so continued in a mere whisper. "I thought..." She stopped, and shook her head. "At least you'd be closer to your father. What about him?"

Shinji's heart tightened in his chest, and suddenly he felt cold. _My father…_ That was a topic that overwhelmed him. "He didn't see me," he answered in the same hushed tone as she had. "He never did. Even when I fought… I… thought maybe..." Again his voice cracked.

"I'm sure he's proud of you," Misato commented softly.

Sullenly, Shinji answered, "Is he? How could I know?" He sniffed. "He didn't see me after the first angel. I saved the world, according to you, I could have died, and he didn't see me. He wasn't even there when I fought the second angel. I…" He closed his eyes and slammed his fists on the table. "I shouldn't have to break my bones and fear death just so he praises me!"

There was no answer. Finally, Shinji looked up to see Misato's reaction. He found her face hard as stone, looking directly at him. "We all face death here! Do you want special treatment for that?"

Now Shinji looked away, his own face just as hard. Misato was being unfair, he could _feel_ that, but he had no way to articulate it. She was factually right after all. She had told him about NERV's purpose, about the explosive charges beneath NERV headquarters, about the lethal risk they all faced. Yet… _This isn't the same, is it? Do I want special treatment?_ What he wanted… what he wanted was to leave. Just to leave this all behind him.

So, he ran. He pushed his chair backwards, stood up, turned around and walked towards the door to the living room, in order to reach his room. Maybe he was in fact a pathetic excuse for a human being, but he wouldn't pilot again. That terror was just too much for him. He'd rather feel guilty for the rest of his life than face that terror again.

"Shinji…" Now Misato's voice was suddenly very soft. And for some reason Shinji stopped before he had reached the door, though he didn't turn around. "The anniversary of your mother's death is soon, isn't it?" Shinji just let his head hang low. He had no answer. Misato knew. "Stay here that long, at least. So you can visit your mother's grave then."

Something inside Shinji told him that this was a mistake, that he should use this opportunity, now that he had finally found the courage to speak freely, to leave all of this behind for good, that he should run away and never look back…

…but on the other hand, _living_ here hadn't been bad. Only the price that had come with it. He feared he'd never be free of that cost if he stayed, but… if Misato offered…

"But I won't pilot," he said grimly, without looking back. "And I won't go to synch-tests. I'm no pilot anymore."

"If you leave officially _now…_ but okay. No deployments and no synch-tests," Misato agreed. "And in a week, you can go visit your mother's grave. Rest now. You have school tomorrow."

* * *

Shinji felt constrained – once again.

He was at a place where he absolutely didn't want to be, but he also couldn't run from it. He feared being here, but he feared leaving even more. He couldn't turn to anyone, couldn't ask anyone, had no one to support him. All he could do was stand here and endure it. Stand here and _fear._ That was the worst pain of them all; the fear that any minute something terrible could happen.

All around him, all over several hills, were endless lines of small black pillars – tomb stones, of a sort. After all the deaths of Second Impact, tomb stones had become a mass-produced commodity. There wasn't even any inscription on them; just round black tubes. There only was a small inscription at the base on which the pillars stood. This one read "YUI IKARI 1977-2004".

Despite the morning sun, Shinji felt cold. He really didn't want to be here. But he also could not leave. He felt caged.

He had already felt caged the entire week.

He had no idea what was going on at NERV. He still had his NERV ID card, so it _seemed_ he officially still was a pilot, but he hadn't been to the Geofront ever since the battle with the third angel. He had even refused a post-battle medical check up by Ritsuko. He just… _couldn't._ It had been difficult enough to tell Misato no. Once he was inside the Geofront again…

He could have asked Misato about his current status. He did wonder what she might have told Ritsuko and Maya and most of all his father… but at the same time he dreaded knowing that. Dreaded hearing how his father had learned about his failure. But most of all he just couldn't _approach_ Misato. Not after what he had said; not after her hard faces of disappointment. And she, for her part, had made no effort to talk to him, either.

For a week now, Shinji had gone to school early, avoiding her, come home, and then bunkered up in his room. Misato had taken late shifts at NERV, so he had simply always made dinner solely for himself. Shinji was comfortable with that, in fact – it was just like the life with his tutor: Misato had always left some money so he could buy himself food, and had otherwise left him alone. That was familiar, comfortable. But still living in the same apartment with Misato… always avoiding her, always even avoiding eye contact, not a single word spoken… that was what was rattling Shinji's nerves.

A second bouquet of white flowers landed in front of Yui's tombstone, as if thrown without consideration. Shinji's face darkened. He didn't turn around; he didn't need to. He knew his father had arrived. And now, more so than ever, he just wanted to run away.

He stayed, but his hands balled into fists.

"It's been three years since the two of us last came here," Gendo commented with his even but hard voice.

"I ran away that day," Shinji admitted. "And never came back here since." There was a pause. "I just didn't see why. I can't even remember Mother being buried here. I can't even remember her face."

"That's how people live on," Gendo stated. "By forgetting. There are only very few precious things we should _never_ forget. That is why I come here every year."

"Aren't there at least pictures of her?" Shinji asked. He tried to sound as even as possible. He wanted to plead, wanted to see such pictures, but he didn't dare to speak up to his father.

"None," Gendo told him harshly. "Even this grave is purely symbolic. There is no body."

Shinji looked down. "So it is like my tutor said; you've thrown everything away."

"I keep what's important in my heart," Gendo claimed. "That's enough for now."

Shinji still kept looking down. There was a sense of betrayal in him. His father might have had his mother's image in his heart, but what about him? But he couldn't say anything. Not to his _father_. He could just stand there and endure the situation, as silence once again fell over the graves.

Finally, a noise burst through that silence. Shinji glanced over his shoulder, just barely, and saw a giant NERV VTOL landing just behind Gendo. He looked forward again.

"It's time for me to go," Gendo commented.

Shinji didn't react. It was just so much like his father to come and go as he pleased, without caring for others. He turned around to say something, _anything_ , but there was nothing.

Then he saw a familiar blue mop of hair behind a window in the VTOL. _Ayanami…_ That silenced him for good. _What is it with her and my father?_ Silently, he watched Gendo enter the VTOL, and then the machine as it ascended into the sky again.

Shinji stood there, looking up into the sky for a good long while. The sun was slowly nearing its zenith. There was not a sound nearby save for the wind quietly howling through lines of tombstones – no birds or other animals could be heard, no humans and no traffic.

Slowly, he made his way through this desolation, back to Misato's car.

The Lieutenant Colonel said nothing when he entered the car, but she smiled at him. Immediately, Shinji turned his head away. Once again, he didn't want to be here, not so close to Misato, where he couldn't escape her. However, it was the only way home.

The street went along a winding path along the coast, with green forests to one side and the red waves of the sea to the other. Shinji sighed silently. He felt… depressed. He didn't know what would happen now. Misato had wanted to keep him around for this visit, and now…

"See, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Misato asked cheerfully. "Aren't you glad you came instead of sulking at home? You got to visit your mother's grave, and could even talk with your father."

Shinji looked out to the sea, his view as far removed from Misato as possible. He had come because Misato had insisted, and now… "What will happen now?"

"Well, that was a pretty big step you and your father have taken towards each other, don't you think?" Misato answered. "Now…"

Shinji's sullen, quiet voice cut through Misato's cheeriness. "Will I leave Tokyo-3 now?"

"Shinji…" Misato began, but then stopped. Suddenly, Shinji was jerked back into his seat. The car accelerated.

He turned his head around. "Mi-Misato?"

But the woman just kept looking at the road ahead of her, resolution in her eyes… or was that anger? Shinji wouldn't be surprised if she was angry at him. He probably deserved it for running away.

"You will not leave," Misato stated flatly.

 _Of course not. They won't let me go._ Shinji's heart got heavy. The thought that he would _have to_ pilot EVA, that this would be his life now, one deadly battle after the next…

He didn't get to brood over this. Suddenly, the car veered. A large stone fragment of _something_ , a fragment that could have easily crashed the car, landed on the road directly in front of them. Misato only barely escaped it. Her NERV communicator beeped.

"Angel attack?" she shouted. "But..."

The rest of her protest was drowned out by a series of explosions nearby. Shinji looked out of the window… his eyes opened wide. _Not explosions. Cannon fire._ There were several warships in the bay, right next to the coast. And they were all shooting at…

The red sea iced over wherever it stepped. It walked on impossibly thin metal sticks. They held up intricate patterns of metal tubes and metal shards, like two hollow upper legs. Those legs in turn supported a short body that was built the same way: Not solid, but an intricate maze of metal lines. On top of it was a spike, holding up a mask… exactly like the one Shinji had seen on that "Lilith" thing down in Terminal Dogma. Below the body, on another unnaturally thin tube, hung a massive metal ball.

The creature stepped right into the midst of the JSSDF flotilla, unperturbed by the constant shelling. The metal head turned, _opened up_ , and released a wave of light… and suddenly the ships were all _raised_ into the air, by _crosses_ of water forming beneath them. They all broke apart, shattered.

"I am currently en route with the… with the Fourth Child," Misato shouted into her communicator. "Initiate Task 03 on Unit 00 immediately!"

Shinji could barely hear the answer coming through the device. "A Task 02 is currently in progress."

"Task 02?" Misato wondered. Then her face distorted into a look of shock. "No way!" While still driving at a breakneck speed, she leaned out of her window and looked up. "It's Unit 02!"

Now Shinji leaned out and looked up as well. He saw something in the sky… one big speck of black, accompanied by many smaller ones. Something fell from the big speck… something red and nearly as big. Something humanoid.

 _It's an EVA!_

It carried a bulky box of some kind on its back. What looked like a gun was being thrown its way… but before the EVA could reach it, the angel reacted. Half a dozen metal harpoons were fired at the Unit. They missed, only to change course and hunt the EVA again.

 _They'll kill him!_ Shinji knew that there had to be a child like himself in that EVA. Another one like him, suffering by piloting.

But the EVA evaded every single turn of the harpoons. They switched direction again and again, but only darted forwards into empty air, the EVA having long since gone, a deadly dance in the sky. And then it had the gun in its hands… no, a crossbow!

It fired. The bolt hit the angel's head mask, and the angel's body beneath it disintegrated.

"Wow!" Shinji marvelled. "He took out the core!"

Misato pushed him aside to look out of his window. "No! That had to be a decoy!"

The iron ball that had dangled beneath the angel's body fell apart, revealing a solid red sphere in its centre. Suddenly the single disintegrated parts of the angels reassembled, into the same delicate patterns, but now with the red sphere at the top. A large spur pointed away from it, towards the EVA.

Again, the EVA fired its crossbow, but now it was blocked by a huge hexagon of light in the air – the angel's AT Field.

"What can he do n..." Shinji started to ask, but apparently the pilot knew what to do: The EVA made several saltos in the air, and then fell towards the angel's barrier with its foot first.

The EVA fell right onto the angel's spur. Several multicoloured hexagons spread all over the air, kilometres wide. The ground shook. Finally, the hexagons… broke. Several pieces of multicoloured light just hung in the air, then disappeared. And the EVA was now right at the angel's core… _in_ the angel's core… _through_ the angel's core.

And as it departed it on the other side again, said core exploded. A huge cross of water and light rose into the air, accompanied by tidal waves all around it, splashing up the cliffs towards the street where Misato was driving.

Meanwhile, the EVA simply activated its backpack, slowed down its fall, and landed gracefully on a parking lot next to the road, at the coast cliffs, only a few hundreds of metres away…

…and just seconds later, Unit 00 came running through the coastal waters, the red liquid splashing up to its knees. It remained standing in the water, looking right at the red EVA, which now rose from its kneeling position. Now Shinji could see the elongated head of the new unit, and its four eyes. It looked right back at Unit 00, with head held high and hands on its hips.

Misato car's arrived there about a minute later – and within just a further fifteen minutes, the parking lot was swarming with NERV personnel. Guards secured the area on both sides, blocking off the road; technicians came to look at the Evangelions; transport crews deliberated how to best move them. And in the midst of that all stood the blue Renault Alpine, Shinji and Misato standing right next to it, like the eye of the typhoon, all activity moving around them.

The pilots of Unit 00 and the new EVA, Unit 02 as Misato had called it, had their machines crouch down. Even so, it took the quick assembly of cranes to remove the entry plugs. Shinji just stood there and watched how they were built up in a matter of minutes. He was glad they were looking after the pilots, instead of just having them return to base, but he felt somewhat useless amidst all that activity, a dead weight.

He saw movement at the crane next to Unit 02. Something small and red was jumping and gliding down from beam to beam, hanging from one, letting go, grabbing the next one and so forth. Shinji's eyes widened when he saw that it was a girl… a girl in a red plugsuit. _The pilot!_

She ran up to the car upon landing, not bothering to stop. "Hey, Misato!" she greeted the Lieutenant Colonel and smiled at her. "I heard you were here!"

The pilot was striking. She had long, red hair, a colour Shinji had never seen before, and she just seemed so lively. The way she had bent her body, which was nicely accentuated by the plugsuit, to climb down to the ground… And there was a certain exotic mystique about her. It was plain that she was a foreigner.

"Welcome to Japan, Asuka," Misato greeted back. "It's quite a surprise to see you."

'Asuka' threw her head back and flipped her hair. "It seems I'm needed here. Had to save you all. The local NERV branch is quite incompetent, isn't it?"

Misato laughed embarrassedly. "I'm part of that branch now, you know."

Asuka scoffed. "Well, intercepting that angel would have been _your_ responsibility then. Where are your pilots who screwed that up?" She looked around, until her gaze stopped at something. "Ah. The pilot of Unit 00, isn't it? The Commander's pet."

Shinji followed her gaze and saw Rei quietly, slowly walking up to them.

Then Asuka turned towards him. "And what about you? Are you a pilot as well?"

"Ah… you see, well…" That _was_ a complicated matter after all.

"Why are you out here?" Asuka shouted at him. Shinji backed up, walking backwards parallel to the car. "You should have been on alert! You're a sorry excuse for a pilot, do you know that?" She paused. "Hmm..."

Suddenly, something slammed against Shinji's ankles, and he lost his footing. He felt himself falling… but two arms grabbed him and he merely bumped against a chest. A very… _soft_ chest. Rei had caught him and prevented him from falling down, so that he was now in her arms.

' _Asuka' swept my legs… and Ayanami…_

He could feel her breasts and heat shot into his face, but it didn't last long: Rei whirled around him, putting herself between him and Asuka. And then she _struck_ at Asuka, a punch right at the redhead's stomach. However, just as quickly, Asuka blocked it, diverting the punch with her left wrist and immediately using the right arm for what looked to be a martial arts strike… but Rei caught that in turn.

And suddenly Misato was between them, separating them, pushing each of them away by the head.

"Girls! Girls! What's the matter with you!"

"She attacked me!" Asuka shouted, pushing against Misato's hand. "That damnable pet _attacked me!_ "

Rei meanwhile was standing still, and her voice was montonous as always. "Don't attack Ikari."

That made Asuka stop. She shot angry glares at Shinji. "Ikari? Like the top guy here." She scoffed. "So it's all nepotism here. He's the pilot of Unit 01, isn't he?"

Misato smiled, one of her typical embarrassed broad smiles. "Ah… he's our reserve pilot."

"WHAT?"

Shinji and Asuka looked at each other with narrowed eyes. They had both shouted the same thing.

"Our reserve pilot," Misato repeated.

"What's a 'reserve pilot'?" Asuka shouted, while Shinji shouted, "I'm a reserve pilot?"

Again, both looked at each other.

"Ah, I'll explain it to you on the way home, Shinji," Misato told him. "You'll manage here, Asuka?"

The girl shrugged. "I heard Kaji is supposed to pick me up."

"That's good," Misato said while turning around to open the car's door. "He'll..." She stopped mid-movement. Turned around slowly again. Her jaw had dropped. "Kaji? Ryoji Kaji? He's _here_?"

"So I heard," Asuka answered, sounding bored. "What does it matter? Just one more NERV guy from back home."

Misato slapped her forehead. Hard. "Godsdamnit..."

* * *

Fuyutsuki peered from behind his half-rolled up newspaper to Gendo. The Commander simply sat in his large chair, his hands steepled on the table, and looked into nothingness. Fuyutsuki tore his attention away from the shogi challenge and sighed.

"Is there a problem, Commander?"

"Nothing that can't be integrated into the Scenario," Gendo replied.

"Shinji," Fuyutsuki commented. He moved a figure on the shogi board in front of him. Gendo merely grunted in agreement. "If he leaves…"

"He will stay here for now," Gendo merely said.

"As a reserve pilot," Fuyutsuki continued. He looked over the board and rubbed his chin. "Will that suffice?"

Again, Gendo merely grunted. However, after a while, he spoke up, "Our predictions had a very low probability of him actually quitting. That he does now shows that his state of mind is a concern. If he breaks too early, he is of no use to us."

"Ah." Now Fuyutsuki understood. "That's why you offered this solution to Katsuragi." He moved another piece. "He may need a break… as long as he's there in the end."

"After Unit 05's destruction, NERV had a surplus pilot," Gendo commented. "It was a reasonable reshuffle that the other branches couldn't deny to us."

"Of course not," Fuyutsuki commented disdainfully. "It'll get their spy into Unit 00."

"Better the spies we know of than the ones we don't," Gendo told him, still without even looking at him. "It ensures that we'll have our eyes on Mari."

 _So that was your plan all along…_ Fuyutsuki narrowed his eyes and looked at the Commander. _Two birds with one stone… clever. Shinji gets his break, so that we can use him later, and they can't send Mari into hiding._ Even when the Scenario changed, Gendo could always see opportunities in it.

A pause ensued, which Fuyutsuki used to continue his shogi challenge for a while. Finally, he spoke up again, "So what about Shinji?"

"Katsuragi is unlikely to let him leave now," Gendo stated.

Fuyutsuki made a face, but didn't answer. Not that it _truly_ changed anything. The Commander _knew_ how he felt, which was also why his second in command didn't even try to hide his facial expressions anymore. _Katsuragi thinks he offered this because he cares about his son. She thinks the two are getting closer. She will not let Shinji leave now that she thinks herself so close to success._ By suggesting the change of Shinji's status and his replacement by Mari Makinami to Misato, it would seem the Commander had actually killed _three_ birds with one stone.

"But how much influence does she have over him?" Fuyutsuki asked. "He could leave over her protests."

"His bond with Rei is strong, just as we predicted," Gendo commented.

Fuyutsuki sighed. "Even so…"

Gendo made a sound of agreement. "We need more bonds chaining him to this place, besides just Rei and Katsuragi. Yes."

Without looking up from his board, his newspaper still in hand, Fuyutsuki stated, "You have a plan."

"An idea," Gendo corrected him. "The Second Child. She has been under Katsuragi's care before."

"Hm," Fuyutsuki voiced, still not looking up. "Does her personality profile match Shinji's? There's a reason we picked Rei."

"Rei was the easy method," Gendo merely said.

"Besides, we can't just order pilots to spend time with each other," Fuyutsuki continued. "Even ordering them where to live would… raise suspicion."

Again an agreeing sound. "But Katsuragi will worry about both of them. Her current and her former ward, neither of them a shining example of social competence. Them living together could train them in that department." Gendo supported his head on his nested hands and grinned behind them. "I'm sure Katsuragi would be receptive to that idea if Dr Akagi presented it."


	2. Introductions

"My name is Mari Makinami – your new classmate!" The girl had long pigtails, stylish red glasses and a smug smile on her face. The whole class was whispering; she looked so much more grown up than most girls in the class – someone new and exciting. Her voice was cheery and uplifting. She clapped her hands together and rubbed them. "This will be so much fun! I _will_ get to know each and every one of you!"

There was a gleam in her eyes. Shinji gulped.

Then he sighed quietly and looked towards the windows as the class started. _A new classmate…_ With some luck, that would draw Kensuke's attention away. He'd rather not tell him the specifics of yesterday's battle. He was just glad that, for once, it hadn't been him fighting. _He_ probably would have simply fallen into the sea and drowned. The very thought made Shinji shudder. He had come so close to death every battle… and it seemed nobody had ever cared about that. Misato had always just taken it for granted that he piloted, had expected it and never said anything. Every time, life had just gone on, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't suffered, and he had always just been forced to fight the next angel. If he hadn't quit piloting, if he had hence fought _that_ angel…

For several minutes, the world around him just didn't exist. The teacher's incessant droning was just a big blur. All he could think of was that thought – that he would have been _dead_ now. And also other memories: Feeling helpless as the first angel mauled his head, the second angel looming over him, the third angel boiling him alive. He could have died at any of those moments, and that was all he could think of right now.

He began to breathe heavily and looked around the room. He didn't _want_ to have those thoughts, wanted to get rid of them, but at the same time, everything else seemed so trivial – his classmates around him, what the teacher said, the classroom itself. There was whispering around him. He noticed that, and was annoyed by it. It just couldn't compare to his thoughts, couldn't penetrate them.

His gaze began to wander almost hastily… until it stopped when it fell on something red and blue. Rei was looking right at him from her seat. For a moment, Shinji just looked into her wide, red eyes.

" _I will protect you."_

That memory began to push aside the others. The first angel – Shinji saw Rei. The second angel – Shinji saw Rei. The third angel – the broad backside of Unit-00 in front of him, holding the shield that protected him from the deadly beam.

"Is there a problem?" Finally, the teacher seemed to have caught on. Hastily, Shinji turned around again to face forwards. But the sides of his lips curled up. The memories had passed.

The remainder of the class proceeded without incident. Uneasiness still simmered and seethed inside Shinji, and the sheer boredom of the class made it impossible for him to distract himself, but whenever things seemed to get too bad, he looked over to Rei. The girl was now looking out of the window, as she usually did in class, but it was still good to have the visual reassurance of her being around. He just wished lunch break would come quickly, so he could lose himself in trivial banter with Touji and Kensuke.

When said break _did_ finally come, everyone seemed to be rushing over to Mari's desk. The girl sat on the desk, feet on her chair, and gave everyone their due amount of attention – a queen holding court. And the way at least the _male_ half of the class was looking at her, plus some of the girls, it seemed she had just won quite a few willing vassals indeed. Most girls eventually kept away from her, scoffing at the attention she was getting, but that didn't seem to deter her. She seemed to have no problems keeping up with the boys, or even flirting with them, or even doing the same with her female admirers.

 _This is literally the first time she has talked to any of them!_ Shinji just stayed at his place. This all was too loud and unruly for him. He usually didn't want to have all too many people around him. Whenever that happened, it was exhausting.

Touji seemed to agree. "Such a commotion," he snarled, lazily leaning his chair back at the desk next to Shinji's. He was the only one in class who ever did this; everyone else was too scared by Hikari's very loud efforts at keeping order.

Kensuke, who stood between the two desks, grinned at him provocatively. "You're just henpecked." He glanced over demonstratively to Hikari, who stood in one corner of the room and looked at the ongoing scene with furrowed brows.

Touji crossed his arms, nearly lost his balance, and then let the chair fall on all four legs again. "I'm not! I just have some dignity, you know."

Shinji grinned faintly; it was good to do this normal stuff now. However, it was of course Kensuke who drove the point further on. "That's a funny way of saying you just don't want to piss Hikari off. Me..." He turned his attention forwards, to Mari's desk. "I have no problem ogling her!"

Touji scoffed. "And that's all you'll ever… ah…" He stopped.

Suddenly, Mari was looking in their direction. And she was standing up now, making her way through the gaggle of admirers around her and coming straight to the three boys.

"Hello there!" she greeted them. "So which of you is Shinji Ikari?"

The three friends looked at each other. _What does she want with me?_ But before Shinji could even say anything, two fingers were pointed at him, with both Touji and Kensuke laughing dumbly.

"So you're the EVA pilot, aren't you?" she addressed him. Shinji furrowed his brows and looked away. There was nothing to say here. She clapped her hands together. "Well, it seems we're colleagues!"

Shinji jerked his head around. Next to him, Kensuke and Touji stood with their mouths agape.

"Colleagues?" Kensuke asked. Then his entire face _lit up._ "You're an EVA pilot?"

"The Third Child," Mari confirmed enthusiastically. "I just got here. I used to be stationed at the Arctic, but my unit didn't survive the one fight I had. I heard they're shuffling personnel around here, so I..."

" _You already fought an angel_?" Kensuke continued.

And suddenly, everyone was around her again, asking her questions, admiring her, seeking her attention. It was too much for Shinji. He simply stood up and trotted away. Touji looked as he departed, but didn't do anything, and he was probably the only one who even noticed.

Outside the class, Shinji stood leaning against the wall and wiped his hands over his face. _If she's an EVA pilot, how can she be so cheery?_ It hurt how suddenly everyone took interest in her, yet at the same time he wouldn't know what to do with so much attention, anyway. He knew his feelings were irrational, but even so… _They're wrong. They're all wrong, this 'Makinami' included. How can one revel in piloting? None of them knows what it's like, except for Makinami, and she should know better then._

He purposefully returned to class two minutes too late. This earned him an angry look from the teacher, something he hated and felt guilty about, but it made absolutely sure he wouldn't be forced to talk to Mari or watch all the attention she was getting. He just sat down at his desk and listened to the inescapable, dull lectures of the teacher.

When class ended, all Shinji wanted to do was to get away from this as quickly as possible, to go home right now – even if it meant having to deal with Misato there. So he quickly packed his school bag, ready to leave immediately.

"Hey, you okay?" Touji asked from his desk.

Shinji just nodded unenthusiastically and then left the room. He trotted through the school corridors all alone, once again reaffirmed in his belief that nobody understood him. Other students filled the corridors around him, all eager to go home or to club activities now, but Shinji hardly paid them any heed. He just got lost in the crowd.

He blinked when he went outside the building. Warm sunlight fell on his face, but this felt more like an annoyance than anything else. Shinji walked unenthusiastically towards the exit of the schoolyard, near the old shed…

... and suddenly stopped when he heard a sound in front of him and a female student uniform began filling his field of vision. His bowed head was looking right at a bountiful chest area.

"Hng!" Embarrassed, Shinji took a step back and looked up. Mari Makinami stood there - or rather, had just jumped there from the shed's roof. She grinned at him. "Maki-Makinami!"

"It's the sad puppy!" Mari exclaimed. "Ah, sorry. But I did want to talk to you."

"But… but…" Shinji stuttered and looked up to the shed's roof.

Mari shrugged. "Only way to escape the crowd." She waved about with her arms. "I'm a ninja!" Shinji just stared flatly at her. "Right then, shall we go?"

"Uh…" Shinji tried to answer, but before he'd even had the chance to formulate words, Mari had grabbed his upper arm and was dragging him along.

"I want to know more about my colleagues!" Mari exclaimed. "We should talk!"

Shinji shrugged and now walked of his own volition. "I suppose we can talk on our way home. Where do you live?"

"I was assigned quarters in the Geofront," Mari answered.

Shinji looked at her in surprise. "But there are no entrances to the Geofront in that direction!"

Mari folded her hands behind her head and looked up, appearing all innocent. "Well then, I guess I'll visit you."

Now Shinji was so shocked and he just stopped. " _What?_ "

Mari came to a halt as well and looked back at him. She laughed. "Oh don't be so shocked! I'll come visit you. Don't worry, I'm a very easy to handle guest. You don't need to feed me or anything!"

"But…" Shinji tried to protest. _A girl coming to my place?_ That seemed so _improper_!

"No buts!" Mari told him sternly, and again grabbed his arm.

After a while, Shinji was walking on the sidewalk, along his usual route, but now trotting behind Mari, who cheerfully walked in front. He feared people would look, but nobody did. He breathed out in relief.

Eventually, Mari, still looking ahead, asked, "You're not piloting anymore, are you?"

Shinji furrowed his brows and looked at the ground. "Not actively, anymore" he muttered. "I'm a reserve pilot now, officially."

Mari stopped and turned around to look at him. Her eyes were narrowed, as if in thought. "You quit? Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Shinji answered, a new hardness in his voice. "Do you like piloting? Fighting!"

"Of course I do!" Mari exclaimed.

Now it was Shinji, who had just passed by Mari, who stopped. _There are people who like piloting…_ "Why?"

"How can one not?" Mari asked, sounding all enthusiastic. "I've been in only one fight so far, but… it was like an escape for me. An escape from before when I just existed. I've never felt so alive as in that fight!" Both slowly began moving again. A silence fell on both. Shinji felt alienated. He didn't really want to hear how someone actually enjoyed piloting. It made him feel inadequate, like he should be the same but was just too pathetic or cowardly for that.

Finally, Mari spoke up again, "I saw the footage of your fight against the dildo angel." Shinji jerked his head around. He was sure it had to be red as a tomato. Mari chuckled. "Oh come on! You know which one I mean! The pink one. That's the one you really took on one to one, with no mysteries. That was kinda like my fight. You charging ahead, into the enemy… you must have felt that as well! That being alive!"

Shinji looked down on the pavement. All he had felt was _dread._ That angel looming over his fallen EVA, and then that last desperate charge. It had been a matter of seconds. He could have died then, but he hadn't cared: He had just wanted to _end_ this dreadful encounter. He had feared so much that in the end he just hadn't possessed the energy anymore to care about his life.

He had been afraid. But there was no way he could say that now. What sort of man would he be? He felt hot and uneasy and awkward walking at Mari's side in silence like that, after she had just asked him a question, but he just couldn't answer it.

After a minute of that silence, Mari continued, "It's okay, you know. I get that this isn't for everyone. Most people would probably crap their pants. So I'm not looking down on you or anything, but… I just don't get it. If I never piloted or did anything like that, what's the point?"

"Before… before I came here," Shinji spoke up hesitantly, "I lived with a tutor. He saw to it that I was fed and clothed, but otherwise barely cared for me. I think I know what you mean by 'just existing'. But it wasn't so bad. I don't think I was happy, but it only got worse when I came here to pilot."

"So that's how you feel," Mari whispered. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, puppy. You should never have been made a pilot." With a quiet sound of resentment, Shinji looked away from her. She laughed. "I don't mean that in a bad way. Puppies are _adorable,_ a good thing, and shouldn't be stuffed into entry-plugs!"

Now Shinji didn't know what to say or think. He was simply confused by that girl. Though he supposed that was better than being resentful. And after a while of silent walking he realized just what Mari had said: That she found it okay for him not to pilot. A faint smile came to his face.

 _How do you tell a girl 'You're weird but okay'?_ The answer of course was that one didn't. There was no way Shinji could say so to Mari. He had a sneaking suspicion the girl wouldn't even mind, but it would still be out of bounds for him to say so. So, the two walked the last metres to Misato's apartment bloc in silence – well, not _actual_ silence, as Mari was quite vigorously humming some pop song, her upper body seesawing back and forth as she walked, but they didn't exchange words. Shinji, however, was content with that. The humming, interspersed with some actual lyrics, was enough. " _With your feet on the air and your head on the ground, try this trick and spin it, yeah..."_ It was enough that Mari _understood_.

He swiped his keycard and opened the door to Misato's apartment with a heavy sigh. He still felt tense leading Mari into here, especially as the Lieutenant Colonel wasn't even here. As she had told him, she currently had a shift at NERV Headquarters. Shinji considered offering Mari something, and if only water, but he didn't know what to say, so he just walked through the kitchen with a dumb, embarrassed smile on his face… and then stopped cold. The corridor was packed full with boxes.

"What's going on," Shinji muttered.

His eyes widened when he saw someone peering out of the room in front of him… _his_ room. It was the pilot of the new Evangelion unit. _Asuka, her name was._ She stretched her upper body out from his room and looked at him with a face full of disdain.

"Why are _you_ still here, reserve pilot?" she asked him dismissively.

"What do you mean 'still here'?" Shinji asked. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Now Asuka came out of his room and defiantly raised her chin. "I _live_ here. You have been replaced, reserve pilot! You are no longer needed! The superior model has arrived. The model that won't just run away."

"Wh-what's that supposed to mean?" Shinji blurted out. Behind him, he could hear Mari giggling.

Asuka just grinned at him. It was a cruel, predatory grin. She seemed to enjoy her victory, or what she regarded as such. " _I_ …"

"She lives here now," a female adult voice said casually from somewhere behind them. Everybody turned to see, behind all the boxes, Misato entering the corridor.

"But… _why_?" Shinji asked.

Misato gave him her broadest smile. "Don't worry, Shinji. You still live here as well."

" _What_?"

 _It's like we're synchronized!_ It was annoying. Once again, like back at the parking lot, Asuka and Shinji had spoken in unison, and were now looking at each other with faces full of suspicion.

"Oh that sounds like fun!" Mari commented.

"Let's face it, you two need to work on your social competence," Misato told them. "You need to learn how to live with others! So that's exactly what you'll be doing!"

"I most certainly won't!" Asuka protested. "I won't lower my standards to living together with second-rate have-beens!"

Shinji barely suppressed a wince at that. Meanwhile, Misato's face against showed one of her ever so sweetly smiles. "That's an order, Asuka." The redhead merely crossed her her arms, closed her eyes and raised her chin defiantly to look away. Misato turned to Shinji. "We'll prepare the storage room for you, Shinji. It will make for a comfy room, I'm sure."

Before Shinji could even form a coherent thought in reaction to that, a clear voice cut through the corridor. "Hey now!" Everyone turned to look at Mari. "You can't just shove Shinji into a storage room!" She nodded towards the other room. "That was Shinji's room!"

Misato smiled embarrassed and rubbed the back of her head. "Well yes, but…"

"It's mine now!" Asuka declared. "I'm a proper pilot after all."

At that, Shinji just looked down. Mari, however, just grinned at Asuka. "Ohhh, so the Princess wants the best room. And so the puppy is kicked out of it as soon as someone else arrives."

"It's..." Shinji began. He wanted to say 'It's alright', but the way Mari had phrased things… he had gotten used to 'puppy' by now, but he kinda was being kicked out as soon as someone else had arrived, wasn't he? So he couldn't finish the sentence.

"We'll already be hard pressed to get all of Asuka's stuff into the _bigger_ room," Misato muttered.

Mari was still grinning. She took a step forward, right between Asuka and Shinji, and laid an arm each around both pilots' shoulders. Looking from one to the other, she commented in a teasing voice, "Of course, it's a pretty big room. If you both want it, you could just share it!"

Shinji began to stutter wildly and incessantly, while next to him, Asuka rambled and spouted protests, half of them in German, and Mari laughed heartily. Heat extended all over Shinji's face.

Finally, a heavy sigh by Misato cut through that noise. "There won't be any bedroom sharing. I'm sorry, Shinji, but as we are now three people here, somebody will have to take the small room."

Shinji balled his hands into fists and looked down.

* * *

After dinner, Shinji had the living room and the TV for himself. He sat on a pillow on the ground in front of it, and unenthusiastically zapped through the channels.

Nominally, it had been his turn to prepare dinner, but Misato had unexpectedly taken over for him, under constant protests that no no, that was fine and that they can celebrate their new roommate. That had kinda fallen flat: The meal had been spent in near-total silence. Afterwards, Misato had immediately retreated into her room. Shinji knew what that meant – she would already start drinking now, and despite her resilience built up over a long time have a killer hangover the next day.

Meanwhile, Asuka had made it pretty clear she wished no social contact at all – even during dinner, she had spent most attention on her handheld gaming device. Misato had shot some dark glances over to her, but hadn't actually commented anything. Afterwards, the redhead had simply taken the device to her room, slamming the door as well as that was possible with Japanese variants.

One would think that, having several dozens channels for himself, Shinji would find something interesting on TV. He already had watched a mindless action flick about a rogue cop turning his back on his department. It had been meh, and now, at the current hour, all channels were running trite, utterly boring nonsense. The soap operas were bad. The so-called 'gaming shows' that were all about embarrassing the candidates were worse. But worst of all were those talk shows where they worked out psychological issues.

" _You need to turn that guilt into action. You can claim to be as well-meaning as you want, but if you nonetheless avoid the issue, don't correct what you have done, then it's worthless. Your self-pity won't help a..."_

Shinji frowned, took the remote lying on the ground at his side, and turned the TV off. Slowly, he rose from the ground and went to… well, not to _his_ room. To the storage room he had been shoved into. Even now, it was mostly filled with Asuka's boxes. There was only a small free space on the ground where his futon lay. There was no window, so as soon as he turned off the light it was pitch dark.

Sleep would not come.

The shadows of stacked boxes, dark in the darkness, loomed over him. _Storage, nothing more –_ like he also was just an item to be stored away. A tool kept in reserve for when it was needed, and in the meanwhile it would gather dust in some half-forgotten old box. Maybe he would never have thought in such terms on his own. Maybe he would simply have accepted being stuck here, because, hey, surely Misato had her reasons, and it wasn't like he needed such a big room anyway. And truly, he didn't. But it was still as Mari had said – that he was cast aside as soon as somebody else had appeared, and _that_ was rankling. That he was cast aside into a tiny windowless room supposed for storage was merely the icing on the cake.

Strange how he had needed that weird girl to point this out to him.

Normally, if both he and Asuka were treated equally, then she, as the newcomer, should have gotten the storage room. _First come, first serve._ That instead he was kicked out of the bigger room and she got it meant that she was seen as worthier. As better. And… _Maybe she is._ After all, she was an active pilot, whereas Shinji was only a reserve pilot, and even that only after Misato had suggested that solution. Just as Asuka had said, he had in fact run away.

 _Is that why I'm here in the dark? Because I'm just a reserve pilot, not the real deal? Because that does make me less than Asuka is?_

Maybe that was all everyone ever saw in another being, Misato included – how useful they were to them. Shinji's father had only called him back when he had needed him, Touji and Kensuke had only become his friends after he had proven useful to them and saved their lives, and Misato judged him and Asuka according to how useful they were to her at NERV. That seemed to be how the world worked.

And that was why he had piloted EVA, in the hope that others would treat him nicely if he had use to them – in the desperate hope that his father would praise him when he saw him doing his work. However, that had never happened. Nobody had ever thanked him, not his father, not Misato, not Ritsuko or anyone else at NERV. Not even his teachers or classmates. They all had just taken his work for granted – his brushes with death, his injuries, his pain. Him going out and meeting giant alien abominations of which he hadn't even heard before. He was a pilot after all, wasn't he? So getting injured and traumatized was just part of his job, nothing to be praised for. In fact, he would get shouted at for screwing up, even though he might as well not have piloted at all.

So he had quit the job. And people apparently had already stopped to be pretend to be nice to him.

Shinji still couldn't shake the feeling that maybe he deserved it. If everyone had to be useful to others… And there were Asuka and Mari as well. _There are people who enjoy piloting._ It had been a startling revelation to him. Surely, it was only natural to avoid pain – so surely that was what everyone would be doing? It set his own misery into a new context. Maybe it wasn't piloting, it was him.

Asuka had taken an obvious pride in being a pilot and Mari had even said she enjoyed _fighting._ But if that was possible, that people not only piloted but enjoyed it, with what right was he complaining? Maybe he should leave the better rooms, the better treatment to such people. Maybe they were the better people then.

And yet…  
" _I could have piloted Unit 01. You don't need to."_  
" _I'm sorry, puppy. You should never have been made a pilot. Puppies are adorable, a good thing, and shouldn't be stuffed into entry-plugs!"_

Confused and realising he wouldn't find any sleep anyway, Shinji rose from the futon, stumbled to the door and turned on the light switch next to it. He just didn't know what to think, or what to do now. How he should feel about being shoved into this room, or what to think about the 'true' pilots. And thus, an almost perverse thought arose in him.

He wanted clearness, and where to better find clearness than in the brusque, the scoffing, the dismissive? So he took his mobile phone and began dialing a number he had never dialed before: His father's.

With a heavy sigh, he hit the send button and took the phone to his ear. And waited. And waited. And waited. Nobody took the call.

Shinji let the hand with the phone sink to his side and looked down.

"Figures," he muttered.

* * *

"Name's Shikinami. Asuka Langley-Shikinami. I go to school here now. And I hope you'll leave me alone. I'm an EVA pilot; I have better things to worry about than your petty concerns.

That was not the usual introduction of a new student to the class. Asuka's announcement left the entire class baffled. Jaws dropped throughout the room. Hikari stood up, but she was definitely not showing her usual self-assuredness.

"Uh… yes… ah, there is a table free there, Shikinami. Near the entrance, second row?"

"Whatever," Asuka replied and went to over there.

As she sat down, the boy on the table next to her smiled at her; she just flashed her teeth at him in response, and he withdrew again. She seemed satisfied with the result, crossed her arms and waited for class to begin. It was a gesture she maintained throughout the lesson, together with a facial expression that quite actively didn't hide how bored and disinterested she was.

Shinji couldn't help but to keep peeking over at her during class. It wasn't like that he ever had been one for social contacts and talking to people, but to show that utter lack of interest in anyone around one so openly… in some way, that was just wrong. But in another, Shinji could respect it after a weird fashion. With that attitude Asuka surely never had to suffer the usual petty egoism people sometimes could get up to. Clearly she wasn't somebody who would put up with being treated like… like…

...well, like he had been. And hence, that odd sort of quasi-respect for her attitude. He knew _he_ would never be able to be like that. But maybe in a world where everyone just wanted others to be useful for them, such an attitude was helpful and healthy, and perhaps it was actually a failure to be unable to muster it. In truth, he probably wished he had Asuka's strength.

 _Then again, if Ayanami were like that, she would never have been as pleasant to be around as she has been. But on the other hand… maybe I'm the same? Maybe I just want Ayanami to be useful for me, no matter how she feels about it?_

Shinji realized that was too depressed and lost in his morbid thoughts to actually follow the class. The fear of being rejected, of being shoved away, was a more immediate concern to him than the teacher's ramblings about pre-Second Impact Japan. Though at least those never resting thoughts kept him from traumatically reliving the sheer horror of the angel battles while he could do nothing but sit quietly.

Finally, the class was over, and lunch break started. As soon as the bell started, Asuka opened her bag and got her handheld gaming device out of it. She didn't even take part in the rising and bowing to the departing teacher. That earned her a scowl from Hikari, who nonetheless didn't miss a beat in the whole routine, and who also didn't comment – maybe she was cutting some slack to a newbie foreigner.

Having a redhead in class, an obvious exotic foreigner, drew much interest. People looked at Asuka, formed groups, whispered. After her introduction, nobody dared to come near to her, until finally one brave soul ventured it. Asuka didn't even look up from her game: When the poor boy came within reach of her legs, she simply kicked against his thighs, causing him to stumble back. The whispering in the class rose to new heights, but even now, Asuka didn't look up.

"Now now, Princess, that isn't very nice."

This finally caused Asuka to glance slightly above the edge of her device with a frown on her face. "What do you want, Third?" she asked Mari in an icy tone.

Her fellow pilot came positively sauntering to her table, drawing everyone's views to her. "Well, I realize we started off on the wrong foot. So..." Mari leaned forwards and slammed both her hands solidly on Asuka's table. Her voice became cheerful. "Let's be friends!"

Asuka lowered her device a bit more and gave the other pilot the flattest of looks. "Why?"

Mari straightened up again and waved with one hand, as if to cast aside that question. "It would be convenient, you know?"

Asuka scoffed. "With my luck, Misato might just order that." She raised her device again and added a mumbled, "But some orders I might just refuse."

Mari seemed surprised by the reaction. "Picky," she muttered. Then she just shrugged and turned around. She grinned at Shinji, who had watched the whole spectacle from the safety of a few tables away, and now walked over towards him. "Our princess is rather abrasive, isn't she?"

"Well, maybe she has the right idea," he muttered in response as she arrived at his table. Touji and Kensuke, who sat or stood next to him, looked astonished, as if it were a miracle that the other new girl had come over.

"Aww, don't be so gloomy, puppy!" Mari exclaimed. That got Touji and Kensuke out of their amazement. They began to snicker. Shinji smiled _very_ lopsidedly. And Mari furrowed her brows and shook her head. "They really should never have shoved you into an entry-plug."

"Hey now!" Kensuke protested, but Mari ignored him.

Immediately, Shinji looked down on his table. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"What? Don't be!" Mari told him. "You're free now, aren't you?"

"Well, I still need to go to synch-tests," Shinji answered very quietly. "But..." A faint smile began to appear on his still bowed head. "I suppose so."

"Of course he would need to go to the synch-tests!" Kensuke protested again. "Only a well prepared pilot..."

Mari looked briefly up at him. "Hush, Noob," she merely said, and then turned her attention back to Shinji. "Ah yes, there's that. Well, that's not so bad, is it? We'll meet there. We can talk during the tests!"

"Ah… Ritsuko doesn't like…" Shinji began.

But Mari merely waved her hand, swatting the argument aside. "It makes reading the stats more complicated for her, but if they let us sit us one or two hours in LCL with nothing for us to do… they can go that extra mile, don't you think?" Shinji would never have thought of matters in that way on his own, but he had to admit the logic was compelling. He nodded and that, as he realized, rather dumbly. "See, things won't be so bad as a reserve pilot."

"I suppose..." Shinji started anew.

" _Reserve pilot?_ " Kensuke butted in once again. _Deja vu…_

Mari furrowed her brows and looked at the boy again. "Didn't I tell you to..."

But this time, Kensuke didn't regard her. "You're not in active service anymore?"

"Ah..." Shinji felt trapped. He had no idea what to answer. Kensuke's infatuation with mecha in general and EVAs in particular had always been somewhat embarrassing or even off-putting to him, but it wasn't like the boy was all about just that. As long as Kensuke could keep his fanboyism in check, he was a good friend. But now… "Well, I… I…"

"You – you quit!" Kensuke concluded. It sounded utterly disbelieving. Shinji didn't answer, and Mari didn't comment. There was silence for a time. Finally, Kensuke's voice turned hostile and accusatory, every word like a whip strike. "You had this chance! Do you know what I would have given for that?"

There was so much to answer here – that Shini had never asked for this 'chance', that _he_ would have given _everything_ for a world in which nobody had ever asked him to pilot, that he would have _gladly_ given that 'chance' to Kensuke and would even have thanked the boy for it, that for him it had been pain and nothing else. Kensuke didn't know what it was like – the pain, the fear, the knowledge that the next fight would come. Despite all this, he was an EVA fanboy. So what was there that Shinji could have said?

 _In the end,_ nobody _knows what it's like. Except Mari and she…_ She liked piloting, so she was just as unrelatable to him. He turned his head away from Kensuke, remaining stubbornly silent even as his classmate waited for an answer, no doubt expecting him to justify himself.

So it was Mari who instead spoke up for his sake. "Sorry, Noob, that isn't how it works. You can't just choose to be able to pilot, or not be able to pilot. It doesn't work by just volunteering." Her voice changed. That made Shinji look up at her. It was suddenly so unlike her cheery, bubbly demeanour before – deep, serious, even hollow. "Trust me. I know."

"As do I!" Kensuke exclaimed. Touji, sitting on his chair by his side, became visibly uncomfortable by the argument. "Trust _me_ , I do. I know I'll never… but Shinji could have! He had the chance! And he just… throws it away! Why, Shinji?"

Shinji's hands grabbed the edge of his desk, hard. Still looking down, he pushed his answer out through gritted teeth, speaking in a low and quiet staccato voice. "Because it's _pain_! You have no idea what it's _like_! How much it _hurts_! How terrifying it _is_! And you all just pretended everything was _normal_!"

"Of course it isn't easy!" Kensuke argued now. "But you go through those challenges! With determination! Willpower! Grit! That's how it's supposed to be. Not… not giving up!"

" _No idea!"_ Shinji shouted now.

The entire class was looking now. There was an uncomfortable silence in the room.

While Mari just shook her head, Touji laid a hand on Kensuke's arm. "I think you should better stop now..."

But for Shinji it had become too much. Unable to face everybody staring at him and unable to face Kensuke's accusations, he stood up and ran out of the classroom.

He didn't pay much attention to just where he ran at first. Just along the corridor, up some stairs, it didn't matter, as long as it was just away from the classroom – away from his embarrassment, his problem, his trouble. He was running away yet again, just as he had with the EVA. Finally, one location entered his mind, a location he suddenly felt drawn to – somewhere where he could literally be above it all, away from all the goings on of the school while still remaining there. He went up to the roof.

The wind blew into his face hard when he exited the door leading to it. He kept standing on the spot for a long while, breathing haggardly. He didn't even regard the vista around him, the view over the city, the clear blue sky. He simply sat down, leaning against the small wall that surrounded the roof area, and curled up around his raised knees. With his right fist, he wiped away some tears from his eyes that he hadn't even realized had formed. He sniffled… and hated himself for how that sounded. He hated _everything_ about this – how he couldn't do anything about the situation, how he couldn't defend himself, but most of all how weak and pathetic he was. He didn't blame Kensuke; after all he truly _was_ that wretched. He had in fact run away, after. And so he blamed _himself_.

He did not know how long he just sat there, his face pressed against his knees so that he didn't need to see the world outside, but when he briefly did glance up, his eyes caught a hint of pale alabaster. Groggily, hesitantly, he raised his head a bit, just enough to see Rei standing in front of him and looking down at him.

"Makinami said I should go after you," she explained, without prelude, in her soft, monotone voice. "I don't know why."

 _Makinami…_ Shinji wondered why that strange girl could have said something like that. He wouldn't have thought of it. Yet, it was true that Rei's presence was reassuring.

"Thank you," he whispered, almost hoarsely. That might have been it, but after all that happened, he felt too weak to bother with pretenses, so after a while he added, "I'm glad you're here."

Rei apparently let that sink in. Finally, she simply asked, "Why?"

With a sad smile on his face, Shinji lowered his knees and leaned his back against the wall. "Because, when you're around, I feel…" He struggled a second for the right word. "...safe. It's like..." He smiled again, abashedly now, looking down between his legs on the ground. "You were ready to pilot for me. You don't attack me. And you told me you'd protect me."

"Oh," was all Rei could answer. "I meant…" There was a long pause. "I will."

Shinji angled one of his knees again. "But… you shouldn't." He paused. Rei didn't comment. Wind blew through her hair. "Maybe that's just how you're useful to me, and hence what I simply expect of you. But that's wrong."

"What do you mean?" Rei asked.

"You protecting me," Shinji explained. "You're doing that, but… I can't protect you. Not any longer. I've run away from the EVA. I have left it entirely to you and the others."

"You blame yourself for that," Rei stated. It wasn't a question.

"Of course!" Shinji confirmed emphatically. "I'm… I'm…" He shook his head.

"Do you also blame Suzuhara? Or the class representative?" Rei asked. Shinji just looked at her incredulously and then slightly shook her head, unsure what she meant. Finally, she explained, "They also don't pilot EVA."

"Well they couldn't!" Shinji exclaimed.

"Neither can you," Rei told him. "You can't return into active service. There are three Evangelion units, and three active pilots. Whether you pilot or not makes no difference."

Hearing it like that still made Shinji wince, even though he could guess how Rei meant it. Besides… He curled up again, and spoke against his knees. "Doesn't matter. I ran away."

"You are free to do so," Rei simply told him.

"And what about you?" Shinji asked her. When there was no answer, he slowly opened up the shell he had formed around himself with his body, and got to his feet again. He looked Rei right in the face. "I could leave because there are enough pilots around. But that means you can't leave anymore. I did so, and hence robbed you of that choice. I condemned you, and also Makinami and Shikinami, to piloting."

Rei looked right back at him, those enigmatic red eyes showing no sign of hesitation. "I don't mind."

Shinji didn't know how to answer to that. She 'didn't mind'? That still felt like he was using her. Finally, he muttered, "I don't deserve this."

"Not everyone needs to pilot," Rei told him. "Suzuhara doesn't. The class rep doesn't. Aida doesn't. You provided me with another bond to the world besides piloting. I _will_ pilot so that you don't have to."

Shinji opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say. Rei spoke as if he had done some great good.

 _What is it that she thinks I have done?_

* * *

Dimmed light fell through always dusty curtains into a bleak, unpanelled room. The last time they had been opened had been over a year ago. The stark brightness of the world, the eternal reminder an outside world forever closed off to the room's occupant, never entered here in full. The room was a mirror of that occupant's soul.

And for years, that occupant, Rei, had had no problems with that. The room in the Geofront where she had grown up; her cramped, dirty apartment in which she was living now – it had always been sufficient. Always straight to the point, always free of the chaos of a world she never fully _got_ , always nothing more than her sentiments, with no baubles or gewgaw. She felt at home in rooms such as this, industrial, undecorated and stark as they were. She had never known anything else, and she had never considered that she might want something else.

She still wasn't sure she did. But those feelings, as if deep down in her stomach, when she was around Shinji, when he had told her she was important to him, that he valued her presence, those were new. They had crashed right into her so far structured and regulated life, an alien object in it – and yet, they were something good. She wanted to feel those emotions. With Shinji around, she wanted to _feel_ , period.

Certainly, it was worth a try. Maybe she could feel even more of that feeling, if…

She looked at the pills in her hand. She knew the medicines were useful. Her body had special needs, and Ritsuko was always examining it closely – uncomfortably closely at times, but that meant the faux-blonde scientist certainly knew what she was doing. And sometimes, it was a blessing how dulled down at times Rei's feelings were.

Sometimes. But with Shinji around, it was also a curse. She laid the pills down on the table again and turned to go. It was time to walk to school.

The streets of Tokyo-3 just passed by her. On some level she wasn't consciously aware of them. In fact, she wasn't perceptive of most things she didn't directly focus on. To her, a walk of five minutes was no different than a walk of five hours; time didn't exist for her unless she was on some task. To her subjective mind, she simply arrived at school; she might as well have teleported.

Going up the stairs, through the school corridors, to the class room, that was just as much unthinking rote. The only reason she caught some of it at all was that she knew she was later than her unusual time; normally she would without fail be the first student to arrive, or the second after the class rep. Now that she wasn't, people kept looking at her; such a deviation from routine from her of all people was something to gossip about.

"Good Morning."

Rei's head turned almost automatically. That subdued voice cut through the mist that surrounded her senses, that mist that seemed to forever separate her from the world. It was an absurd reaction; it was just Shinji entering the class room, and yet his presence the _only_ thing besides piloting that seemed to be able to rupture her from the usual greyness of her life, and that made it valuable, even when he wasn't talking directly to her. And she did want _more_ of that feeling.

It was odd to have nothing to do, and yet have time pass by second by second. The teacher hadn't arrived yet, class hadn't started yet, but something kept Rei's attention. She _tried_ to not always look at Shinji. He already seemed so overburdened with the expectations people put in him, and so he didn't need her to do the same. It was a good thing that now he didn't have to pilot anymore. His duty had been necessary, but that necessity had ended, and he deserved freedom from it. It was a freedom she could never have; she was under no illusion there; but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it.

Only when class started did Rei drift off… and during these times, that seemed to be true for most of her classmates as well. School was irrelevant. All the education they were receiving was in the end meaningless, for they would not get to enjoy its fruits anymore. Even so, Rei tried her best to keep up with the curriculum, reading everything and doing every piece of homework. After all, that was a duty assigned to her.

But that just meant that actual class was _particularly_ unimportant. She didn't need it in order to fulfill her assigned duty. Books had proven to be a much more competent transmitter of knowledge than the teacher.

Without even fully consciously realizing it, Rei stood up, bowed, and sat down again. Class was over and lunch break had started.

Rei just sat at her table and looked out of the window. Soon this break would be over and the next class would begin. She was completely attuned to this routine. Outside, she saw birds on a tree's crown near the window. Ignorant beings, but also free beings. Their mundane activities always interested her much more than what the teacher had to say, or what the class talked about.

Someone cleared their throat. Rei turned around. Her eyes opened a bit when she saw Shinji standing right at her desk. His cheeks were strangely red.

"I, uh… wanted to thank you for yesterday," he explained. His speech was oddly hasty. "And, uh, I… I noticed you never have lunch with you, so… ah… wellImadeyoualunchbox." He simply stretched out his arm and held such a box in her direction.

Carefully, Rei picked it from his hands, laid it on the table and opened it. "Oh..." She really didn't kow what else to say. "That's…" She couldn't even say what it was. She looked down at the table, and now she felt heat on her own cheeks as well. "Thank you, Ikari," she whispered.

She sat there, he stood there, both with slight red in their faces but smiling, and neither said something.

Only when Shinji began looking visibly uncomfortable did Rei notice the whispering that went all through the class. And then a louder, more aggressive sound – Asuka scoffing. As with everything else, the German pilot made no secret about how she felt, looking at the scene with crossed arms and contempt in her face.

Shinji smiled lopsidedly, told Rei "I hope you'll enjoy the box", and then went back to his table. He got something out of his box, and then went over to Asuka. The redhaired girl began looking defensive as he approached. She didn't say anything, but "And what do _you_ want?" was basically written on her face.

"I, ah, I made something for you as well, Shikinami," Shinji told her. "I mean… whatever the circumstances, we are flatmates now, aren't we? And you do pilot. That's that's brave of you. Uh..." He seemed to be losing his trail of thought. Asuka still looked unimpressive, so Shinji was growing visibly uncomfortable. Whereas he only had a faint blush before, now, his head began looking like a tomato. "Well… I made you a lunchbox as well." He simply placed it on the table.

Asuka nearly lost the balance on her chair. She looked at that box with surprise, than at Shinji, then at the box again. Then her eyes arrowed with suspicion. "A lunch box. For me. Why? You have no reason to like me, Fourth."

Shinji shrugged. "Neither you nor me chose our situation."

"I… uh… I…" Asuka stuttered. Then she harrumphed again. "Thanks, Fourth. But don't think this will mean anything."

"Mean what, Princess?" Mari shouted from across the room. "We all know what you're thinking."

The class began to chuckle openly. Asuka, her face now distorted with anger, slammed a fist on her table and protested, "Get your mind out of the..."

However, Mari was way louder than her. "Way to go, puppy! Woo the princess!"

 _Wooing…_ Rei did not like the new strange feeling she was suddenly having.


	3. The first synch-test together

_Maybe I shouldn't have stayed as reserve pilot…_

But Shinji wasn't actually feeling sad or melancholic, just grumpy. It was Saturday morning, and yet he still had needed to wake up early because NERV just had to schedule a synch-test at such a time. _At least living with my tutor I had a room with windows…_

Actually, the last few days had gone better than he would have predicted when Asuka had first moved in. It was true that she was very convinced of her own superiority, and thus mostly communicated by scoffing at other people. However, it turned out that she mostly wanted to be left alone; pretty much the same as Shinj himself, actually. So if she wasn't in the bathroom or eating dinner, she would always be in her room, and hence not bother anyone. In fact, he had been able to have some conversations with her at the dinner table…

...and she had immediately taken to calling him just 'Shinji'. Without honorifics. And not even blinked an eye when he, hesitantly, returned that address. That was just _weird_ to Shinji. But overall, it seemed it wasn't so bad to have an interesting flatmate around. And especially since it was, ah… _rather pleasant_ to look at that specific flatmate, who looked so different from all the other students in school, and who was so lively and energetic. Yes, on the visual level at least, it was definitely an improvement, even though Shinji felt guilty mentally admitting that.

So currently, Shinji didn't really have much reason to mope around. In fact, being grumpy was even kinda liberating: There were no big crises, just a very mundane grumbling about having to get up early on a Saturday morning. That mundaneness was indeed actually kinda nice.

" _Are you quite finished in there?"_

Shinji sighed. On the other hand, having that new flatmate also meant being constantly besieged in the bathroom in the morning.

He hadn't even known himself that he could be so spiteful and petty, but when he opened the bathroom door, he did so extra slowly. Outside, Asuka was already waiting with crossed arms and angry scowl on her face – that was to say, Asuka was waiting.

"What took you so long?" she complained. "Were you using your time there to do perverted things?"

"To… _what?_ " Shinji exclaimed. He felt totally overwhelmed by that question, and began stuttering. "I… I don't… I'd never…"

"Well, I sure hope you never!" Asuka pushed on. "It's bad enough that you kept an _Evangelion pilot_ waiting! Someone you'll need at top form when the next angel comes!"

"I know," Shinji responded. It came through clenched teeth as he was looking down. This was not a topic he liked to be reminded of. The problem was that Asuka was right – pilots like her did deserve a special treatment for that reason, whereas he had run away.

Asuka rose her chin defiantly and scoffed. "Well, better take that to… hey wait! No! It's my turn! Misato!"

While Asuka had still postured and talked, their guardian had rushed past them, past the bathroom door and right into the bathroom. Said door was now locked again,

" _Scheiße!"_ Asuka cursed. "Misato! Get out of there!"

"Sorry!" Misato trilled from inside the room. "But I need to get to NERV before the synch-test begins! I need to hurry!"

"And that comes to your mind _now_?" Asuka protested.

"Can I borrow your deodorant, Asuka?" Misato shouted through the door.

"No you absolutely may not!" Asuka shouted back.

A short while later, a spraying sound could be heard. Angry Asuka noises followed.

" _Gott verdammt nocheinmal, diese Frau…_ gahhh!" Asuka turned her head to Shinji. The boy almost took a step back when furious eyes glared at him. "The worst part may not even be having to live with you, but with her! What is she thinking?"

"Well, uh, she does need to get to NERV earlier than we do..." Shinji meekly began to defend their guardian.

"Then _maybe_ she should have gotten up earlier!" Asuka exclaimed. Shinji merely gave her a flat look. "...that this is unrealistic is exactly the problem you know! She _could_ have woken up two hours earlier."

"She probably still was in the headaches and nausea phase back then," Shinji muttered. "You _could_ get her up before 8, but you really don't want to on weekends."

"Yes I know, I lived with her in Germany," Asuka ranted. "Urgh, she is still like that? Do her typical dinners still consist of beer and crackers and even more beer?"

Almost against his wishes, an amused smile began to show on Shinji's face. "More like ready made curry. Poured into ready made rice." He shuddered at the memory, and in added in a mutter, "I never understood why she doesn't simply use beer sauce."

That made Asuka laugh out loud. "At least she doesn't drive under the influence. Though you would never be able to tell from her driving style."

Shinji's smile got broader, though of course it cost him some effort to be as bold as Asuka. "That… uh, it at least means she… it will take longer until she gets lost?"

"I can hear you two, you know?" Misato shouted from the bathroom.

Shinji winced, but Asuka was unperturbed. "Yes, we _do_ know! How the hell did you end up our guardian anyway?"

There was no response from the bathroom. _OUR guardian…_ It was factually true, of course. Misato had assumed guardianship of Asuka from Mr Kaji, that rather odd, unshaven employee from NERV Europe who had arrived at the same time as Asuka. _What a weird little 'family'…_

"Well, it seems like we're stuck with her," Shinji offered with an awkward smile.

Asuka harrumphed. "It does. And that's how they treat pilots." She paused, and worked her mouth for a bit. " _Or_ reserve pilots. Amateurs' club."

Shinji looked sideways. "That's true, actually…" He shook his head. "There are worse people around than Misato, though. I guess… I guess it isn't her fault. I think running a household, having wards, she's just not made for such tasks. She tries, but it isn't like NERV is providing any support in this."

"Well, she..." Asuka began forcefully, but then her demeanour changed, to almost pensive. "I wonder if she ever asked for or requested aid…" She scoffed again. "Sure doesn't seem like her."

Shinji smiled lopsidedly. "No, it doesn't. I suppose it can't be helped. We have to make the best out of the situation."

Another scoff. "How passive of you. I hope you'll at least try harder at the synch-test." This caused an uncomfortable silence between the two. _Synch-tests. Still a duty we share._ "It's bad enough that we'll have the Commander's pet and Miss Crazyskirt there."

Shinji chuckled. He didn't like how Asuka referred to Rei, but as for Mari… well, it was hard to argue with that name. "She kinda is, isn't she? Mari, I mean. In a good way, though."

"Oh of course you would say so, perv!" Asuka accused him and crossed her arms.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean!" Shinji protested.

"The way she dotes on you," Asuka explained, then laughed sharply. "Mari and Rei both. I guess you really are a momma's boy, going for the..." She narrowed her eyes and grinned viciously "... _maternally looking_ type."

"I didn't… I didn't _ask_ her to dote on me or anything!" Shinji protested, and then quickly added "If… If you can even call it that." He closed his eyes, crossed his arms, looked away and added in a sullen voice, "She's just being friendly, you know. You could try that as well."

"People aren't worth friendliness," Asuka whispered. It sounded suprisingly serious and aggressive, which shattered the somewhat goofy atmosphere of their previous argument.

Another awkward silence followed. Eventually, Shinji desperately tried to break it. "I do wonder what's up with her, though. Why she is so… odd. I mean, she is Japanese, right? Just being stationed on some NERV base for some years can't have changed her _that_ much?"

"And contrary to what you Japanese think not every foreigner is a weirdo!" Asuka protested. Shinji just looked at her flatly, but thought it wiser not to say anything. "Anyway, yeah. Something's up with her, and something's up with Rei. I wonder wh… no, actually I don't, as long as they just leave me alone. I can do my job alone, after all."

Shinji tried a shaky smile. "I'm sure you can."

"So don't go off the deep end as well, you hear?" Asuka told him. "You'll be the only other sane at the synch-test." She shook her head. "Madness. The only other sane one, and it's the reserve pilot – the little puppy."

Shinji wanted to say something but then just smiled lopsidedly.

"What? What is it?" Asuka demanded to know.

But Shinji just shook his head. There was no way he could explain what had just gone through his mind. _Just my luck. I get my weird little family… sibling rivalry included._ But in a way, it was reassuring. After all, he just needed to listen to Touji to know how aggressive even little sisters could be. And Asuka was half a year older than him. _Maybe I should see her outbursts in that light…_

* * *

"That was a bit unusual, wouldn't you say, Maya?"

The addressed person turned around in her office chair and looked at her sempai. "What do you mean? I've read the personnel file of that Asuka. It was clear she would be a little brat."

Ritsuko gave her a faint smile. "Not Asuka. Rei. She greeted when she came in for the briefing. 'Good Morning'." She chuckled lightly. "She has never done that before. And then the way she looked at Shinji…"

Over the years, Ritsuko had always tried to keep Rei's medication doses as low as possible. However, that wasn't easy. The blue-haired girl was artificially made, and required constant maintenance. Eventually, she herself had requested a dosage that was had kept her constantly numb. Which, given her life and her treatment, was more than understandable.

 _A treatment, a life in hell, I'm contributing to…_

Without the meds, Rei could maybe live, though even that wasn't fully certain, seeing as something like her had never existed before… but would she be able to pilot, to do her part in the great work? The great work without which she would never have been created in the first place. So Ritsuko probably would have to talk with her about the meds… but at the same time, she couldn't help but enjoy seeing her have a respite. If in this state Rei could synch well, maybe at least the dosages could in fact be significantly reduced…

And of course there was nothing that could come out of any crush on Shinji, not given the girl's background, but it was kinda nice to see her just having such feelings at all. Every schoolgirl should have a schoolgirl's crush, or several, at some point.

"I didn't notice, but then I don't really care for puppy love stories," Maya stated.

Ritsuko smiled faintly. "So I take it your date last night didn't really go well."

Maya sighed, turned her office chair around again and picked up her cigarette from the ash tray. "You know me too well, sempai."

Ritsuko walked up to her, laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. "You're bound to find a fitting, attractive girl eventually. If you don't work yourself to death here first, that is."

Maya laughed sharply. "Pot, kettle. Well, let's start _today's_ work then, shall we?"

The pilots soon arrived at their test pods and entered them, though not without some commotion. Ritsuko could see the Third Child, Mari, joking and laughing about something, which caused Asuka to angrily shout something at her – which only caused Mari to laugh even more. Ritsuko smiled lopsidedly at the sight.

"Children..." Maya scoffed.

"They are, you know," Ritsuko reminded her softly.

Maya sighed. "I know. It's just… They're also pilots of megaton war machines. Some discipline could be expected."

Ritsuko shook her head. "If it weren't for the defense of the world, none of this could be _expected_ of them."

That was what she always clinged to. The defence of the world. That justified everything she did, right? Rei's drugs, chaining living gods in NERV's basements, not telling the kids what it was they were piloting, endangering them just by letting them near the units, nevermind the fights… all for the defense of the world.

"You know, sempai…" Maya said pensively. She paused, and it took a while for her to express her thoughts. "You always seem to care too much about those things. That doesn't fit in our world anymore. Maybe that is why _you_ can't find a fitting, attractive man."

"Very possible," Ritsuko muttered. "Very possible."

"Second Child ready," Asuka reported over the comms.

"Yeah, let's start. This will involve enough waiting as is," Mari added.

"Be more professional!" Asuka hissed. Meanwhile, Shinji and Rei were quiet. Ritsuko could see on the screens that both already had their eyes closed.

She didn't envy the Children all these tests. It wasn't a hard task, but she could imagine it was a tedious, bothersome one. Just laying in LCL for an hour, sometimes even two, doing nothing, not being _allowed_ to do anything… with the mandate being to have a clear mind and thus even _think_ of nothing…

Synch-tests had to be boredom incarnated.

Ritsuko blinked when suddenly a pop-song was hummed through the loudspeakers.

"Seriously, Third?" Asuka hissed from her test tube, but then immediately tried to return to an eyes closed state of concentration.

Mari continued her humming, her eyes closed as well.

"Uhm, Mari..." Ritsuko tried.

"What?" the girl defended herself. "The European scientists at my base eventually learned to cope with that!"

"It was a Russo-European base, wasn't it?" Asuka asked.

"As for the _Russian_ scientists..." Mari answered. Ritsuko could see a smug smile forming on the girl's face on the monitor. "I did learn a lot of Russian cusswords during my time."

Shinji began to chuckle at that, a sound very much unlike him.

"I'll see what can I do about copying the methods from your old base, Mari," Ritsuko promised her. "For now I'm afraid we'll have to stick to protocol."

Mari sighed exaggeratedly. And then she did keep quiet… for about fifteen minutes. On the monitor, Ritsuko could see how she became ever more agitated, moving her arms, her legs… strangely, this did not seem to affect her synch-rate. Ritsuko furrowed her brows. That was odd. Something didn't add up with the test data from that gi…

"Hey, Doc, am I still not allowed to sing?"

Ritsuko, violently torn from her own concentration, sighed, looked up from the terminal, and rubbed the ridge of her nose. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"If I'm getting any more bored, I'll have to play I Spy With My Little Eye," Mari threatened. "And none of us wants that. _I spy with my little eye… something orange._ "

Again, Shinji chuckled. Asuka sighed in a very dramatic fashion. Rei answered in her usual flat voice, "The LCL".

"Ah..." That seemed to have caught Mari flat-fooded, who now didn't know ho react. Shinji actually laughed, and so did Asuka, by the sound of it almost against her will.

"Everyone knows so, Ayanami," Shinji explained softly and patiently. "That's the joke."

Maya muted her microphone and turned to Ritsuko. "Okay. Now I see what you mean. And I think it may have just given me diabetes. Urgh." She turned around and activated the microphone again.

Meanwhile, Mari was giggling. Or maybe it was heavy breathing. Actually, it was quite unclear what sounds the girl was making, but it didn't sound very… healthy. Or sane?

"Can I please have my audio connection to those fools muted? Please?" Asuka pleaded now. " _Nicht mal in Synchtests kriegt man mehr seine Ruhe..._ " **[1]**

Ritsuko sighed, and hit a button to do just that. And while she was at it, she also muted the audio connection from Asuka's test tube to the Pribnow Box. _You're not the only one wanting their quiet during synch-tests, Asuka._

She looked at the terminal again… and did a double take. The read-outs were impossible. Absolutely impossible.

"Look at that!" she urged Maya. Her assistant wheeled her office chair over… and did a double take herself when she arrived.

"How… I've never seen that value so high," she commented. "Or even only half as high"

Ritsuko looked up again, now through the glass front of the Pribnow Box. "How is she not…" She shook her head. "Something isn't adding up."

After some minutes, Mari began to complain again. "Gah. Boooring!" And when there was no reaction. " _Ohuiye! Nahuya mne eto nado, suka? Poshol v zhopu! Mne do pizdih tvoiy problemi, blyad! Eb tvoyu mat, manda!_ " **[2]**

Everyone stopped doing what they did. Mari had sounded _very_ aggressive. But after some seconds, she started giggling.

"I can just imagine your faces right now," she laughed. " _Pizdets!_ "

It didn't _sound_ like she was joking, though. Ritsuko looked at the terminal again. _No, she isn't joking..._

* * *

Before closing the locker door, Shinji took another look at the plugsuit he had hung up there, and frowned.

 _Nothing has really changed, has it?_

Yes, he had had a break from synch-tests for nearly two weeks now – but now he was back to it. And yes, Asuka and Mari were now part of those tests – but that had nothing to do with him. The point was that even though he was officially designated a 'reserve pilot' now, he still went to tests as if nothing had happened, as if his new status didn't _mean_ anything.

 _I'm still tied to it. Still bound to EVA._

And he didn't like that thought at all. Doing a synch-test again, he felt like this whole world, this world of NERV and Evangelions and angels, was something he just couldn't escape from, no matter how hard he tried. And that was a rather depressing thought.

He shook his head and closed the locker door. It would come as it would come. It seemed he could exert little influence on the events in his life, anyway, so there was little point in worrying. With his view cast down, he trodded out of the changing rooms and through the corridors of NERV headquarters.

His mood improved a bit when he saw Mari ahead. The girl was waiting in front of some elevator shafts. This was their bottom floor, and the area had been designed to almost look like the lobby of a luxury hotel – small but intense lights lined the ceiling, there were potted plants in every corner, the panelling involved many gilded elements and there was a very large glass case at the wall with several flyers containing various up to date information for NERV personnel.

Like everything in the NERV Headquarters, it was very shiny. Shinji didn't think that appropriate; after all there was nothing glamorous about what they had always pressured him to do. But given its architecture, Headquarters could also have been a maze of gloomy corridors, and Shinji supposed that would have been even worse.

Mari herself was rocking back and forth, probably lost again in one of her constantly hummed pop-songs. Shinji still found it a bit awkward to approach her in such a state. She never seemed to care at all who was around, and that could set off Shinji's insecurities.

"Uh..." he began with a smile.

Mari turned around. She wasn't humming at all as he had expected, and the rocking back and forth hadn't so much been melodic as more jerky. " 'Uhhh…'? Yeah, that's kinda all you can say, isn't it, puppy?"

Shinji froze in his tracks and blinked. The girl had sounded incredibly aggressive. He tried a shaky smile. "I… I guess I'm not a great speaker."

"So why speak to _me_?" Mari basically _hissed_.

"Ah, w-well, I thought..." Shinji stuttered.

"You thought. And how has that turned out for you lately?" Mari asked.

Shinji now was feeling near tears. "What… why are you… what's your problem?"

"Look, you're better than _some_ people," Mari told him aggressively. "But if you could just stop for a minute with your fucking mopiness. It annoys the shit out of me, and that's your fault! Just kiss the princess or the doll! Instead, you let all your chances go to waste." She scoffed. "To be fair, them as well. Godsdamnit, have some fun with them! Both of them, if they're up for it! Just stop being so… argh! I just _call_ you a puppy, you know that, right? You don't have to behave like Pavlov's very own puppy. _That's_ my problem. _You_ are!"

Now Shinji truly didn't know what to say. He felt very, very hot, and his head felt like it might burst. _Have fun with… but of course. Yes. I_ am _trouble._ That was the truth of his life right there. And even his embarrassment at Mari's words couldn't hide that fact. He couldn't formulate a clear answer. He could just stand there and sweat.

Suddenly Mari began laughing. It was the old cheerful laugh he was used to from her. She waved her left hand. "Oh, you should see your face, puppy." A grin appeared on hers. "Thinking about what I said? About having fun with both of them? Don't worry, puppy. I was just messing with you. You're a good guy. I, ah… I just wanted to see how far I could get you out of your shell. Ehehehe, seems like I still need to work on my technique. Well, hope you didn't take that too badly. See you around, puppy!"

And with that, before Shinji even got the chance to answer her, she just ran off.

"But the elev..." Shinji tried, but Mari was already gone and just then an elevator arrived at the bottom, its doors opening with a _ping_ sound.

Confused, he stood in front of the elevator, not knowing what to do or how to react, just looking the way Mari had run off to. Slowly, the elevator doors were closing again.

"Hey! Keep the door open! I want to take that elevator!"

Shinji shook off the confusion. Without even realizing who had shouted, he darted forwards and held out an arm between the closing doors. A second later, Asuka caught up to him.

"Jeez, Fourth! What's the matter with you?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Shinji didn't answer as they both entered the elevator. Asuka pushed the button. Finally, he answered. "Maybe I have. Mari…"

Asuka scoffed. "Oh that bitch." When Shinji just looked at her, she explained. "Real bitch in the changing room. Shouted, accused me of stuff, called the First a doll… totally out of control." She shrugged. "Some people are just weird."

This made Shinji feel uncomfortable. "But Mari has never been like that."

"You can't trust what people show you of themselves," Asuka merely commented. "And she's always been odd. Stands to reason she's a bit unhinged."

Shinji looked at the redhead. _You can't trust people, people aren't worth niceness…_ But Shinji couldn't say Asuka was _wrong_ in her attitudes, exactly. If even Mari could turn on him like that… _But that's just it. It hurt. People should at least_ pretend _to be nice to each other._

The elevator reached its target level. Both teenagers exited it, a awkward silence hanging between. Trying to break through it, Shinji asked, "What… what about Rei?"

Asuka shrugged. "She said she had an appointment with the Commander. You know, I don't think I even want to know."

 _Father…_ What was that link between Gendo and Rei? It made Shinji feel insecure. With that link in place – could Rei maybe turn on him like Mari just had? That would hurt way more.

Passing through another all too glamorous entrance area, well lit throughout even though nobody else could be seen, the two made their way to their intended target, a small parking lot in front of that entrance. There, they could already see Misato standing next to her car, looking in their direction.

The Lieutenant Colonel smiled broadly at the two teenagers approaching her. Asuka only rolled her eyes in reaction.

"Sorry I couldn't have been at the test," Misato apologized. "Mari's redeployment is causing more paperwork than anyone had expected. I heard she also caused quite some commotion at the test?"

"You can say so," Asuka answered sullenly. "And nobody said a word about it. Undisciplined amateurs, everyone here."

Misato's smile turned kinda awkward. "Eheheh… sorry to hear about that, Asuka."

"Whatever. Can we go home now?" Asuka asked.

"Well… yes. But since you both powered through the test regardless, I have a surprise for you!" Misato announced.

Shinji watched her curiously. Asuka, who had already gone to the front passenger's door and had begun to open it, looked up again and merely tiredly raised an eyebrow.

Misato took a rectangular piece of plastic from one of her bags and held it up. "An entry pass to the JMEPRO main facility! I've arranged matters with the top brass there. You get to see all the fish and corals already long extinct in the wild. Kaji..." She sighed, rolled her eyes and continued far less enthusiastically. "...has agreed to supervise you all – all the pilots, and you can bring friends as well."

"That… that does sound nice," Shinji muttered.

He had heard of the Japanese Marine Ecosystem Preservation Research Organization, simply because they were so unique. Administratively, they were just a national Japanese branch of the UN's International Environmental Agency, but they were far ahead of some other branches, a true pride of Japan… or so teachers had boasted to him in school. There were literally hundreds of species, dozens of genera, several orders of sea life that only existed within the confines of the JMEPRO's facilities anymore – the last remnants of an once glorious and global ecosystem. Normally, regular people hence got no access to those facilities. The risk of them damaging something or carrying in an infection that would finish off some of those species was just too great.

NERV's influence was truly remarkable, and Misato's gift something special. Maritime biology had never exactly been Shinji's field of interest, and he didn't know if he would see something worthwhile at the facility, but given those circumstances… it was worth a try. And Misato meant well.

Asuka sighed. "With all those people? Do I have to go?"

"You should, Asuka," Misato answered. Her tone was still superficially friendly, but had gotten a slightly harder edge.

"I'd rather not," Asuka told her. She looked over the car at the Lieutenant Colonel and grimaced. Her own voice was now becoming icy, almost hostile. "Or will you make that an order as well?"

Misato furrowed her eyebrows. Then she jerked her head sidewards, in order to look away. She breathed out. With one hand, she grabbed the elbow of the other arm. Finally, she looked back to Asuka. "No. I won't make it an order. You're free to stay at home."

"And that's what I'll do," Asuka insisted. "Let's go there now. I've had my fill of people for today." She opened the door for good and entered the car.

Before Shinji or Misato could do likewise, he could see her looking at the spot where Asuka had stood. Her face was as cast in stone, but it took several seconds before she finally entered the car as well.

* * *

 **[1]** "Not even in synch-tests you have your peace/quiet anymore."

 **[2]** As for that… yeah you can… you can look that up yourself


	4. JPMPRO

At least _Kensuke and Touji_ were having a _blast_. The two ran around the corridors, looking at the aquariums and the animals inside, taking in sights they had never laid eyes on before. And Kensuke was constantly filming it all. Now and then Touji looked over to Shinji with a worried face, but he always got distracted again by all the marvels around him.

Shinji couldn't blame him. When he had first seen the giant aquarium, he had been the same. His face had lit up, and it had seemed that indeed going here was worth it.

He had seen fish in all imaginable colours. Some fish species still survived even in private aquariums so this hadn't been entirely new to him. However, there was so much more in that tank, and it was all so foreign and alien that for the most part he hadn't even had names for all these creatures he had never once seen before in his life: Almost transparent creatures of soft tissue with tentacles floating in the water, reptile-like creatures with hardshelled humpbacks, creatures flat as a pancake who still could swim even with that shape.

But then, he had become aware of the huge shadows falling on it all. Deeper in the aquarium, hovering in the background, Shinji had suddenly been able to spot the contours of true giants – fish the size of Misato's apartment, if not the entire apartment bloc. Titans looming in the dark… like a menacing portent of pain…

And suddenly Shinji had been back at the beginning. When he hadn't even known about Evangelions and angels and they had just shoved him into an entry plug and then put him out there for the first angel to beat up. _Sachiel_ , they had later called him. Sachiel had loomed just the same in the mists that had engulfed the city… right before mauling Unit 01. And Shinji had been unable to do anything, unable to defend himself. They had sent him out to die.

He had stumbled back, breathing hard. He would have run away, if not for a soft pale hand suddenly grabbing his, behind both his and her back. The contact had ended again soon, but it had allowed Shinji to just sit down and stabilize.

 _Can I never enjoy anything again?_

Rei was still with him, standing in front of him. She was… stability. Protection. He would not die. Not with her around. Not today, not tomorrow.

 _And I'm free now. I'll never have to feel that pain again. Ayanami is protecting me._

He looked up at her and smiled shakily. "You should use the time we have here, Ayanami. You should go around, see things."

"So should you," she simply replied in her usual soft and monotonous voice.

Shinji shook his head. "Just because I… I don't need to drag you down with me."

"You aren't," Rei told him. "You're more important to me than the exhibition of maritime life."

Shinji's eyes widened. It had been said in such a simple voice, as if it was just a normal everyday statement – as if saying that was no big deal. He doubted he would have been able to do the same. He looked down again, his face red, but with an involuntary smile on it.

He just sat there like that, shaken but stabilizing and oddly content, and Rei just kept standing next to him. Finally, he shook his head again. This just wasn't fair on her, no matter what she said. So he would just _have_ to try.

Somewhat shakily, he got up. "There… there's more stuff to see than the big central tank. Maybe I can… let's go there?"

Rei just nodded.

Light from the tanks tinted the entire absurdly giant room in various shades of blue. Between the machines, the stairs, the pipes and the ventilation system, there were many quiet corners and hidden nooks, all drenched in blue. It made for a peaceful, almost meditative atmosphere. Or maybe that as well was just Rei's presence. The girl now walked in front of Shinji, and her gait was as always: unexcited, but sure of herself, and always graceful.

He had seen her plenty of times in a plugsuit, and at one time, _ehem_ , even full frontal nude. But Rei in that simple dress of the facility they all wore for reasons of disinfection, almost like just a white sheet on her… she looked so innocent in it. So pure. So…

...desirable? Heat shot into Shinji's face again. He shouldn't think that. Rei was his anchor of stability; he shouldn't demand even more of her, not even just in his own thoughts. It was just… he trusted her implicitly. If there was one human on the whole Earth whom he was sure would not hurt him, it was her. And that drew him to her like a magnet. _But it's unfair towards her. I can trust her, but that just means I need to repay her somehow, not burden her even more._

Eventually, Shinji and Rei went up to a gangway that surrounded a much smaller water tank. Inside, the fish were numerous but small, and there were no other animals around. Watching the swarms was almost hypnotizing. And there was something to just standing here, shoulder to shoulder with Rei, both focused on the same thing.

"They look so lively," Shinji eventually commented pensively. "It's too bad how cramped they have it here. So many fish in such a small tank." Rei made an agreeing sound. "They should be out in the open."

"They can't," Rei answered. "They can only survive here, so they can't leave." She paused. "Just like me." Shinji watched her with some surprise. Finally, she turned around to go. "It's time for lunch soon."

"Ayanami, wait," Shinji called to her softly. The girl stopped. "What do you mean, just like you?" Rei stood with her back to him, and didn't answer. Finally, Shinji said, "I… I don't know about maritime biology. Maybe… maybe the fish can indeed never leave. But, as for you… I don't believe that."

Now Rei turned around. "What do you mean?"

Shinji smiled unsurely. "If… if even I managed to leave piloting… you're so much stronger than me, Ayanami. I think… I think you can reach whatever you want. No matter if it is in Tokyo-3 or not."

Now it were Ayanami's eyes which widened, though only minimally. Then, finally, she answered, "That's a nice thought."

Shinji smiled encouragingly at her. It was strange how natural that came to him, especially after his sort-of, kind-of collapse. But if there ever was one person under the the heavens who deserved encouragment, it was Rei. "Let's go find the others. I made you a lunch box. And no worries, I took care not to include meat."

That had been a bit embarrassing the first time Shinji had given her a lunchbox in school: Turned out she was a vegetarian, and that her body didn't take well to meat. Since then, Shinji had made her a lunchbox daily, and always without meat. He also had gotten to make lunchboxes for Asuka, despite her denial of appreciation for it… which was always kinda undermined by how enthusiastically she was usually eating said lunch.

When he passed by Rei, who still remained standing, she spoke up again, "Why are you always doing this for me, Ikari?"

Shinji stopped, turned around and looked at her in the face. "What do you mean?"

"I could supply myself with nutrients," she explained. "And you even take extra care to make vegetarian meals for me, even when using meat for yours or Shikinami's. It seems like a lot of effort."

Shinji felt somewhat embarrassed. "Well, with some practice you eventually hardly notice." That could have been it. But with Rei, he felt _safe._ Safe enough to continue talking whereas with another person he probably wouldn't have. "And I just think you deserve it, Ayanami. You seem to suffer enough pain as is. I like that I can do some good for you. I…" He began blushing again. "I liked your smile when I first brought you a lunchbox."

"Oh," Rei merely answered. And after a pause, "You do this for me. But I…"

Shinji smiled at her. Emotion came pouring out into his voice when he answered. "You pilot so I don't have to." And that… that was _salvation_ to him, and Rei his saviour.

"...I think you deserve that, Ikari," Rei answered. "You suffered enough pain."

That now did take Shinji aback a bit. He looked down and mumbled, "I don't know. You protect me, but I don't know if I'm worth protecting."

"You are," Rei confirmed. Superficially, her tone was as soft as always, but now there was steel in her voice. Utter determination. "Let's go. The others might have already started without us."

They had, or at least they had already began to sit down on a large blanket in an open area near an aquarium wall. It was Touji who spotted the two latecomers first.

"Hey there, Shinji, Ayanami!" he shouted. And as the two came closer, he asked, "You're feeling okay, Shinji?"

Shinji nodded and tried a weak smile. "Yeah. I'm… I'm good." He could just so avoid looking at Rei; that would have been a bit obvious.

"Alright, man!" Touji cheered. "Come sit down. Hey man, you cooked most the stuff anyway, didn't you? You should get the first pick."

"You did, Shinji?" The voice was scruffy and somewhat deep. Shinji turned to Kaji, who sat on the blanket in a very legere position. He wore a shirt, but was unshaven. Shinji still didn't quite know what to make of him. "That's not bad. You know, men who cook get all the girls." He managed to make it sound like a sage's advice.

Touji crossed his arms. "There are other ways. Shinji can cook all he likes, I won't. A man's gotta have a code, you know?"

Kensuke chuckled at that. "I'd like to see you tell that to Shikinami." He paused. "Where are she and Makinami, anyway?"

"I don't know about Makinami," Shinji answered while sitting down and seeing to the lunchboxes, "but Asuka just stayed home. I think she prefers to remain alone."

"Man, what a depressing girl," Touji complained. "I won't miss her bitchiness, that's for sure."

Shinji furrowed his brows. "Hey now..." he said quietly, but he didn't protest too loudly.

"Home alone all day long…" Kensuke mused. Then he focused on Shinji again. "Well, uh, thanks for… uh… you know, Shinji. The meals." He seemed to be slightly awkward.

For a while, an embarrassed silence settled on the group. Shinji couldn't help but watch Rei open her lunchbox and take the first few bites. She didn't smile and remained entirely quiet, and yet her enjoyment was plain to see – and Shinji liked seeing it. Finally, Shinji's tension and Kensuke's awkwardness were broken when Kensuke and Touji entered a loud argument on whether those weird tentacled creatures they had seen were called 'jellyfish' or 'octopi'. Nobody believed Kaji suggesting 'octopodes'.

After the lunch, Touji and Kensuke kinda drifted off, each of them going separate ways exploring the facility. And _somehow_ Shinji ended up with Kaji outside, on a gangway overlooking the red ocean. He wasn't quite sure how the man had managed to do that, and how he had agreed to leave Rei behind. He was sure the girl could take care of herself, but he still felt half spirited away.

Still, he wasn't ungrateful to Kaji. What he had been able to take in of the aquariums after he had stabilized again had been marvelous. So he spoke up, "Thank you for taking us here, Mr Kaji."

Kaji leaned back against the railing, looking straight up so that his cigarette stood out from his mouth like a chimney. "No problem, kid. I think you all deserve to see something else now and then. And this here especially." Shinji looked at him questioningly. He saw that in the corner of his eye, shrugged and explained, "You pilots, active or reserve, are defending more than just desolate wastelands and dead seas. You're defending a hope to return to where we once have been."

With furrowed brows Shinji now looked over said red sea. _So that's what it's like? He'll just remind me of my 'duties'?_ He had experienced that often enough from Misato to become suspicious. And it wasn't that they were _wrong_ – he did have a duty, and he had in fact run away from it. It was just that there was no way he could resume it, no matter his guilt, and he didn't need to have this fact shoved into his face again and again.

So, after a while, he tried to change the topic. "It's difficult to imagine that the sea used to look like that aquarium. Before Second Impact, I mean."

"I only have vague memories of it," Kaji claimed. "But yeah, Misato sure is missing out." He chuckled sadly. "Of course, not even an angel attack could have ever brought her to here."

"Oh right. She got us the entry card, didn't she?" Shinji answered. "So why _isn't_ she here?"

Kaji winked at him. "Well, for one thing, I'm here." Then he sighed and leaned his head into his neck again. "But that's not the problem. She _can't_ come here, Shinji. This place is haunted by her personal demons. It holds a lot of bad memories."

"Bad memories?" Shinji asked. "Of what?"

"Second Impact," Kaji said darkly.

And so he explained: How growing up, Misato had a very distanced relationship with her father, who was far too involved in his work as a scientist to find much time for his family. How eventually, she had come to resent him, started nagging him, even arguing constantly with him. How in order to rebond with his daughter, whom he did love, Dr Katsuragi decided to take her on his next scientific expedition – to Antarctica, in 2000. How it was that expedition which triggered Second Impact.

…and how her father ended up saving her life, at the cost of his own. How he died, because he had brought her along, all because of her resentment. How he died without her ever having been able to ask for forgiveness, or even just say good bye.

 _She resented her father._ Shinji could imagine that she may even have felt abandoned by him. _She's just like me._ But then, why didn't she seem to understand?

"That's why she joined NERV, eventually," Kaji concluded. "Being a survivor leaves you with a lot of baggage, you know. This was her way to work it out. She can't go into battle herself; that's what the Children have to do. But she can still do her part, and I think she _needs_ to, or she would crumble." He turned his head around and was now speaking suprisingly sharply. "Do you understand that, Shinji?"

"I, uh… think so?" Shinji answered.

"She is hurt and scarred, and working for NERV is the only thing that's holding her together," Kaji summarized. "Shinji… you're not the only one who is suffering."

Shinji griped the railing hard and looked out to the sea. He felt ashamed at being called out like that, but he also felt it wasn't fair. A very fresh memory emerged in his mind: " _...I think you deserve that, Ikari. You suffered enough pain._ "

Rei didn't think anything about him suffering. She didn't think it weak of him; she just wanted to help. And if she accepted him and his suffering like that… then there was no shame in it. Besides, after his collapse, he was too mentally exhausted to bother with pretending anymore.

He turned back to Kaji and spoke gravely. "I am, Mr Kaji. I can't even go to an aquarium anymore without freaking out. I… I _am_ suffering." He breathed out and felt a bit dizzy. It had cost much mental energy to say as much.

"You and Misato, you're just..." Kaji began.

However, a now more forceful Shinji interrupted him. "I… I didn't know Misato was like that. But I can't do anything about her hurt. It's all because of Second Impact, isn't it? Buried in the past. I can't help her with that. How is she helped if I feel pain as well?" And more quietly, "If.. if you say I suffer… Why is it alright that I suffer just because she does as well?"

Kaji's face became hard, so that he nearly crushed the cigarette in his mouth. "Misato is haunted by her very special ghosts. She doesn't think she _deserves_ happiness. But Shinji… everyone is suffering. And yet, everyone is worth saving… Misato in particular, who is an amazing woman. I can't protect her. You'll have to do that. You'll have to save everyone."

Shinji balled his hands into fists. "Everyone," he muttered. "Everyone is saved… but only I get to suffer. The world was saved when I defeated that weirdly shaped angel. Everyone was. But only I got boiled alive. And then I am just sent back to school, and everyone behaves as if nothing had happened." And quietly, while looking down, "Nobody even thanked me. When I succeed, they all just took that for granted, no matter how painful it was. And if didn't, they shouted at me or beat me."

Kaji sighed. "It is unfair, yes. Only you kids can pilot EVA, so we burden you with so much. That is not right of us… but it's necessary. That's how the world is."

Shinji still didn't look up, still had his hands balled into fists. "That's easy for you… you don't have the experiences I have. None of you had to go through what I had to go through. It's easy for you to say that this is just how the world is."

Now it was Kaji who looked away. "Misato can get very wrapped in her own pain. I know that, Shinji. It may seem to you that she's taking you for granted and… she was the same with Asuka. But she _has_ to be that way. If she starts doubting, she'll crumble."

Another pang of guilt hit Shinji. Was he that selfish? Had he truly not seen why Misato had acted the way she did?

" _You're more important to me than the exhibition of maritime life."_

...did it matter? Should her hurt matter more than his? Those were almost revolutionary thoughts to him, but if he was worth that much to Rei...

"Wrapped up in pain," Shinji whispered back. Slowly, he looked up again. "So will you give her the same speech as well?"

"I see your point," Kaji answered curtly. He paused. "I can only _ask_ you to protect Misato, because she means a lot to me." Shinji looked away. "And… what about Rei? I think she means a lot to _you_. Will you leave her to fight alone?"

A melancholic smile appeared on Shinji's face. This at least was firm territory for him, surprising as that fact was even to himself. He looked at Kaji again. "She pilots so I don't have to. And I will to my best to try to repay her… even though I think I'll never be able to."

"You let her fight for you?" Kaji asked in a very accusatory voice.

Now, Shinji refused to look down. He knew how it sounded, but he also knew how it _was_. With Rei, he felt _safe_ about those matters. "It's her choice, just as it is mine. It's…" Putting that instinctive feeling about Rei into words was still somewhat difficult, though. "I trust her and her choice. If tomorrow she were to come and tell me she couldn't pilot anymore, that she was breaking down, that she needed me to pilot… I would go out and pilot for her. Because I know she wouldn't lie in this, would never manipulate me. So when she says that she will pilot for my sake… I believe her that she isn't hiding anything."

Kaji scoffed lightly. "It isn't really brave to declare your willingness to fight in an event that may never come. You can comfortably do so knowing Rei will never step aside. Isn't that a bit selfish?"

"That's why I need to make it up to her, _somehow_ ," Shinji whispered. "She doesn't need someone to pilot for her. She needs someone..." He began to blush heavily, but refused to back down. "Someone to take care of her. My father apparently never did." His voice got firmer. "I will."

"I see," Kaji merely answered. He threw his cigarette into the sea and stomped off.

* * *

Holding his school bag with both hands in front of him, Shinji leaned his head back into his neck and looked at the clouds above him.

 _That certainly was an eventful weekend._

And now it was back to school. He knew that it could be worse. At least he wasn't returning from an angel fight to the everyday trivialities of class. After the Shamshel fight he had been so unready to face school again that he had stayed home for several days and then had ran away. Even then, Misato had still expected he go to school after he had come back. Nobody seemed to ever really be considerate towards what he was going through.

 _Rei is…_ And he had no idea how he should could ever thank her for that. How could he show his gratitude without becoming even more of a burden to her? It was not like he had any experience with girls, anyway.

And the worst part was… He had freed himself from this life – or so he had thought. But after what had happened at the aquarium, it still _felt_ like going to school right after having suffered an angel attack. _What more is there that I can do?_ Even quitting didn't seem to have liberated him. Maybe it could ensure that he wouldn't suffer even more damage… but some damage was already done, and it seemed like he would never be able to heal it.

 _And all that because I wasn't able to say no…_

He did feel a bit of resentment about how everyone – Misato, his father, Ritsuko – had pressured him into piloting, had caused this damage, but at the end of the day it had been his own decision. It had been his own weakness, his own inability to say no. He only had himself to blame for this damage, truly, and now he would have to live with it.

He sighed. And despite all those thoughts going through his head, he would now have to pay attention at school, no matter how laden his head was with so much other stuff. He wouldn't get a respite from the trivialities of…

"Puppy!"

Shinji startled. He had just passed a corner to a small alley leading to a low density residential area. Lost in thought, he had paid no attention to it. But there at the corner, marked by a cobblestone wall to a garden, stood Mari, as if ready to intercept him… which probably was the case.

"Ma… Ma… Ma…"

"Mari, yes," the girl answered cheerfully. "Or Makinami. Also correct!"

Shinji still remembered her aggressive verbal lashing of him after the synch-test. "Hello," he muttered and looked away.

Mari sighed. "Yeah, fair enough. I really was a goddamn idiot. I… ah, I wanted to apologize again. I mean, it was all fun and games, but I should have been more considerate of you! It was… really stupid fun and games. I'm really sorry about that, puppy."

"It's alright," Shinji muttered. After all, the girl hadn't said anything wrong. He really _was_ cowardly, apathetic, witless. He still kinda resented how she had brought that up, though. He resumed walking.

"No it isn't!" Mari insisted and hastily ran up to his side. "I truly didn't mean it that way. I fucked up. So… let me make it right again."

Shinji glanced sideways at her. "Right?"

"Yes!" Mari urged. "So… ah, could you please stop for a moment?" She did, but Shinji walked on. " _Pleaaase?"_

Shinji sighed, stopped and turned around… and then his eyes widened when Mari went down to one knee, and held up her hands.

"Just… just imagine I'm holding up a sword I'm offering to you, alright?" she said cheerfully. "I'm hereby pledging my service, my loyalty and my sword that you have to imagine to you, my lord, until my debt is settled."

"...you're crazy," Shinji muttered flatly, completely confused at the scene.

Mari, still kneeling, giggled. "What gave it away, my lord?"

"Don't call me that!" Shinji insisted. "And…" He stopped himself. _Actually…_ "Uh… well… ah, there is something you could help me with. To settle the debt. If you just stop with that nonsense then." Already, people were looking at the strange scene. Mari didn't seem to care at all.

Enthusiastically, the girl jumped up. "Excellent! What is it, my… puppy?"

 _Not much better…_ Shinji sighed. "It's, uh… you must promise not to laugh! It's something you may not tell to anyone. Which seems like something that would be difficult for you."

To his surprise, Mari answered with a barrage of laughter. "Oh, puppy, if only you knew… I guess one day I'll have to tell you, just to see your face. But trust me…" She looked around all conspiracy-like, leaned forward to Shinji and whispered, "You can tell me!"

Shinji sighed again. "Well, what other choice do I have…"

* * *

School was stupid. Or rather, school was stupid for _her_ , and Japanese school doubly so. Asuka already had a college degree; what did she need school for? Misato and Kaji had both said something about the need to socialize, but Asuka didn't _want_ to socialize. She looked down on all empty-headed fellow students around her, on their constant chatting about trivial banalities, on their constant need to talk and make friends. People were… people were _exhausting_ to her. Spending time in school _drained_ her. Just listening to the teacher the entire class, surrounded by students on three sides, was bad enough, but the breaks were even worse.

She didn't want to engage those people, but she also knew that the world didn't work like that. The world didn't care what one wanted; people only followed their own interests. People wanted safety, so they made her an EVA pilot. People wanted to pretend this all is normal, so they sent her to school. That was just how the world worked. So all Asuka could do is behave likewise; try to gain by herself what she wanted.

That was one reason why she was never far away from her handheld gaming console, the Wonderswan. She played relatively simple games on it, but they kept her mind occupied – ensured that she wasn't thinking. If she wanted to get away from the bothersome reality around her, then escapism by gaming was the only thing she could do. And she hardly ever did _not_ escape. If she didn't… the concerns about others replacing her, the thoughts about what she had to do, the memories of… those were all hard enough in those moments she _didn't_ have access to the Wonderswan.

She already _knew_ the world would only value her according to what she did for it, according to how well she could pilot, according to her fighting. She didn't also need to constantly think about it.

At least, soon this all would be over. She was in Japan now, deployed for actual anti-angel engagements. Few would have been able to get through her training regime, but now it would pay off. It was hard, but soon everybody would respect her. And that was all she ever had asked for – not friendship, not niceness, respect. She had gotten few so far, but then again, she hadn't been able to prove herself yet. Now she would.

And given that, given all that, what did she care about class gossip and the like? She thought about her proving herself; having to listen about who maybe kissed whom was so annoyingly trivial in comparison. She thought about fighting angels; the giggling of the girls was a distracting noise. She thought about her training; the shouting and boasting of the boys reminded her how unimportant everything else was.

That was why people drained her. Compared to her experiences they all were so… empty. Empty and trivial, and none of them would have endured her training. At least Shinji had the good graces to keep shut up most of the time, but it had been a bit of a disappointment to see how badly Japan had trained its pilots, whereas she in Europe…

"Hey, Shikinami, do you ever play anything else than that thing?"

Asuka stayed focused on the puzzle game on the screen in front of her face. She held the Wonderswan that way to shut out the world, so what some idiot outside asked was not something she would pay attention to.

"Just saying. You're an EVA pilot and all! You should seek some challenges!"

Now Asuka at least furrowed her brows. _It's that Kensuke guy._ And for a while, her quiet seemed to have the desired effect; for the moment Kensuke didn't push on. But then he escalated things further.

"Are you afraid you aren't up for the challenge?"

Now Shikinami hit the 'Pause' button and grumpily looked over the edge of the Wonderswan. She saw that Kensuke had had the good sense to keep standing some metres away from her, well outside the range of her legs. But unlike most people he didn't retreat under her glare.

"I mean, don't you wanna test yourself in a real game? I'd get bored only diddling on that thing all day long." Asuka scoffed. "Maybe you could even beat me… but I doubt it."

"Yeahhh," Asuka finally drawled. "I sure could 'beat' you right now. What the hell are you on about?"

Kensuke shrugged. "I was just wondering if you have any interest in video games in general or just that… thing."

"Why?" Asuka asked back.

"Well, if you want some extraordinary games, there's an arcade hall in town," Kensuke explained.

Asuka scoffed again. "What? Are you trying to ask me out on a date? _You?_ "

Kensuke looked at her flatly. "Look around. Do you see many gamers here? That has nothing to do with dates. I'd just like someone to play the arcade with me, boy or girl, and well, you seem to be the type. I fear I have dragged Touji in there too often already."

" 'The type'," Asuka echoed ironically.

"It's more interesting than always just keeping on that damn thing," Kensuke answered, nodding towards the Wonderswan. "Look, if you don't want it to look like… going out together or stuff, just appear at the arcade by yourself. I'll probably be there today and tomorrow after four." He shrugged in an exaggerated motion. "If you want, you can try it out. If not, not. But what have you got to lose?"

Without answering, Asuka raised her Wonderswan again and resumed playing. Her peace and quiet, that was what she had to lose. Then again, playing the same level over and over again, dozens of times, just to keep oneself from thinking, did become exhaustingly repetitive over time. Maybe there were better alternatives around. But why then had it taken that idiot for her to think of that?

* * *

Standing to the right of a sitting Gendo Ikari, as he so often did, Fuyutsuki saw Kaji leave the large and dimly lit office of the Commander. He couldn't say he liked the man, but then, it wasn't like he liked Gendo, either. What was worse was that he didn't _trust_ Kaji. Would the man really do as told if push came to shove? Was what he reported really trustworthy? He had gotten them the Key of Nebuchadnezzar, but then, why shouldn't he have? He held no allegiance to its former owners. Was this one deed really worth all the trust they put in him now?

He sighed. There was maybe one thing speaking for them, though. "He has no illusions about us… and even so he really does think he's doing this for a good cause – for the defence of the world."

"Not the world," Gendo disagreed in his deep, growling voice. He didn't even turn around to look at his second in command. His bespectacled eyes were directed straight forward. "Katsuragi. If it weren't for her, he would only care for the world lasting long enough for him to solve his grand puzzle."

Fuyutsuki looked at the Commander from behind his back. _And you would know about such devotion…_

Finally, he continued, "If his report is to be believed, Lt Col Katsuragi is the primary problem in regard to the issue of the Fourth Child." Gendo merely grunted non-committedly. "If her behaviour could be changed, Shinji might be willing to return into the fold. We need to put pressure..."

"No," Gendo merely said. And, after a pause, "It isn't the Lieutenant Colonel's fault. We cannot expect her to coddle the pilots. If the Fourth Child quits because he didn't get enough nice words, then he was simply too weak, and this is on him."

"Regardless, we need him at a specific time at a specific place," Fuyutsuki reminded him, and for once he allowed a bit of annoyance to seap into his voice. "So now that we have diverged from the Scenario, we need another path for him to get there."

"We cannot accommodate his petty selfishness and weakness," Gendo stated.

Now Fuyutsuki too a step forward, leaned both of his arms against the table and looked sidewards to the Commander. "If this were anybody else, you wouldn't care. You've always just figured personal strengths and weaknesses to be something to be taken into account, something to be used or be worked around. You only care now not because of the Scenario, but because he is your son." Gendo remained silent, and merely rested his head on his nestled hands. "We can even use that to our advantage! Tell Katsuragi you had a chat with Mr Kaji – he didn't report to you, of course, you two just talked. And then tell her that you don't appreciate what he heard about her treatment of Shinji. Once again you will come off as the distant but still concerned father to her. That will strengthen her dedication to keeping Shinji around, and might actually affect her behaviour."

"No," Gendo merely said.

"But..." Fuyutsuki began to protest.

"No," Gendo repeated. "That plan is unworkable."

Fuyutsuki looked at him with narrowed eyes. _Are you really an asset to the Scenario any longer? Maybe we underestimated how much family ties would complicate these matters. Then again, we didn't have much of a choice. It had to be Yui's kid…_ With a sound of annoyance, he pushed himself from the table and stood up straight again.

"There is another option," Gendo continued. "Mr Kaji told us about it. Shinji said that he would pilot if Rei told him he needed to."

Fuyutsuki shook his head, not that the Commander would be able to see it. "The connection between the two has become closer than we anticipated. Right now, Rei isn't just influencing Shinji and binding him to here. I fear he has begun to influence her as well."

"We still need that connection to keep Shinji bound," Gendo argued. "And Rei will still do as she is told."

"Probably," Fuyutsuki conceded. "She will tell Shinji she can't pilot anymore and he needs to. And once he asks why, even _he_ will realize that she has been ordered to say it. Rei won't be able to make up enough convincing lies. She isn't exactly a social butterfly, Ikari." A bitter smile appeared on his face. "We made rather sure of that."

"You think he would refuse her?" Gendo asked.

"Once he realizes she was simply ordered to say this? Of course," Fuyutsuki answered. "If we wanted to break the bond of trust between the two, that would be a perfect way to go about it, but it won't get Shinji back into the entry plug. He already defied Katsuragi about this. He would also defy Rei, once he realizes it isn't her true wish. It's still an option we have, but… it would be a desperate last ditch effort."

"Something to be saved as the very last possible action," Gendo concluded. "Something for later."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "Indeed. For now, we seem to have no safe way to secure Shinji's return to EVA."

 _Not without you stopping being a coward, in any case._


	5. Angel Alert

Whenever Rei had no other obligations, she was in her apartment and waited.

Doing nothing had always come natural to her, ever since her creation. For years, her entire universe had been a single room beneath the Geofront, surrounded by machines constantly monitoring her physical state, and only the Commander's visits had broken up the monotony of her life – bright points of light in a grey mist. His Scenario was the only thing that had ever given her life any meaning at all. Only piloting EVA was giving her a tenuous bond to the world at all. Without it, she would have nothing, be nothing.

So anything outside the Scenario and the Commander's orders didn't matter. Anything beyond that had just never been part of her life. There was nothing for her to do during times not spent on NERV or school. Those times were irrelevant. She only existed for the sake of the Scenario, and hence would do nothing else.

It had become easy to accept that these past years. Ritsuko's medication had become stable, with no more side effects, and it had made it easy to not care about anything happening at all. She had _requested_ those meds to reach that state.

...and now, it was over.

As she was no longer taking the meds, restlessness began to take up ever greater parts of Rei's day. Unfortunately, she didn't know how to deal with it. She couldn't just sit on the sole chair in her apartment anymore, surrounded by dust and heaps and stuff, and watch the hours pass by. What was more, the Commander's Scenario was no longer having that singular hold on Rei's mind. There was also the Commander's son. That strange fluttery feeling she had inside whenever the two were speaking with each other or just standing close together – it fully justified not taking the meds anymore, and made the torturous boredom that began to fill her days worth it.

She just wished she knew what to _do_ with that feeling. It was like an aching for more, but Rei did't know more of _what_. It was like a desire to be near Shinji constantly, but that would of course have been unreasonable.

Rei turned her head towards the long corridor towards her door after there had been a sudden knocking on it. She didn't pay it much more heed than that; if it was something important whoever it was outside could just come in after all.

"Ah… Ayanami? Are you home? Sorry to bother you, but I got something for you."

Red eyes widened slightly. There it was again, that fluttery feeling in her stomach. It was Shinji. Before she had even realized it, Rei was up from the chair, and in small, fast steps had come over to the door. She opened it.

Shinji stood outside in his usual school uniform, with his usual far too large belt, and with both hands behind his back.. Rei had long since tuned out the clutter and garbage on the ground outside, or the overflowing of the mailbox in her door, but Shinji stood out, like something that shouldn't be here. But she was glad he was.

He seemed somewhat surprised at the quick reaction; then he smiled awkwardly. "Ah, hello, Ayanami. I… I really hope I didn't disturb you or anything." Rei vigorously shook her head. "I… well, you really helped me at the aquarium, and… uh, with everything else." There was a blush on his face. "So, I thought, I… I should thank you."

"Oh," Rei merely said. She didn't think anybody had truly thanked her before. The Commander had always just _expected_ her to do her duty, which made sense – it _was_ her _duty_ after all. She would do whatever necessary to see the Scenario fulfilled. Appreciation didn't enter into that.

So why was it so strangely satisfying to be appreciated? Because it was Shinji? But there was more to it. It just felt… good. Most of all, it _felt_ like something, and that itself was new and good.

It was now that he brought his two hands from his back to the front – and they were holding a small bouquet of flowers. "Ah… just to show my gratitude. I'm really grateful to you." That blush on his face was still there. Somehow this made the fluttery feeling inside Rei all the stronger.

However, the _meaning_ of his action was still a mystery to her. She looked at his face, her heart pounding in her chest and then, hesitantly, at the flowers. "I do not understand. Why are you giving me flowers?"

And Shinji just smiled softly at her. Rei had gotten used to people scoffing at her questions, or just ignoring her, or talking down to her. None of this mattered as long as she would get an answer, or even if not that was irrelevant if the question didn't actually matter for the Scenario. How people treated her in all of this had never been a concern.

Yet Shinji never scoffed or talked down at her or ignored her. He always did take the time to explain. And while this _shouldn't_ have mattered… it _did_ to Rei. She was surprised by that herself.

"It's a common present to show appreciation," he explained in this friendly, soft tone of his. "Not very utilitarian, I guess, but, uh… they say that isn't the point."

Rei slightly furrowed her brows. "I don't like flowers. They are all the same, and yet without use."

And just like that, the smile on Shinji's vanished. "Oh." It sounded so depressed. Rei felt like she had done something wrong. She desperately wanted to have that smile back. She got so little… so little _Shinji_ during the day that she didn't want to waste this moment. But she didn't know _what_ she had done wrong. Shinji began to turn around. "I suppose… you can just… throw them in the trash or whatever."

"Ikari!" Rei called out. The boy stopped. "Show me what to do with flowers. I want to use them."

The smile returned. Rei was relieved. "Ah… may I come in then?"

Rei just nodded and stepped aside to let Shinji enter. After some searching, he found an old glass bottle that had stood in a corner of Rei's sleeping room, filled it with water, and then put the flowers into there. Then he put the bottle with the flowers on Rei's small desk. He smiled when he was finished, but then looked around in the room and sighed.

When Rei didn't comment on that, he finally said, "Well, I suppose it's a small improvement." Rei just looked at him. "I – I mean it's your apartment, Ayanami, but I think it would be nicer for you if it were more… decorated." He began to mumble. "And with less trash around. And some light in it." He sighed. "But I shouldn't impose mysel…"

"What do you mean?" Rei asked.

Now it was Shinji who furrowed his brows. "Do you really like living like this?"

"Like?" Rei echoed in a small voice. That was a thought that had literally never come to her. She lived here, and the apartment was functional. That was all that had ever mattered to her.

An awkwardly long silence ensued. Finally, Shiji smiled again. "Would you mind if I helped you a bit with your apartment?"

* * *

Rei blinked when bright light was suddenly falling on her face. She raised her hand over her eyes, and even took a step back from the window.

Shinji smiled at her over his shoulder, still holding the dusty curtains he had just opened in his hands. Truth be told, they smelled a bit, a slightly sour odour, but Shinji was ignoring that. He was after all just a guest in this house. Light was now flooding the room, sweeping away its former gloominess. The first step had been taken.

It turned out that it wasn't like Rei had no idea how to keep her apartment clean. It was a combination of a total indifference about the environment in which she lived, and very strange habits that seemed to have formed over the years. For example, she was actually orderly: All her dirty bedsheets were gathered in one heap, all her used bandages in a small cardboard box, all her medicines on the small desk she had. There was a sense of order, but she seemed to have absolutely no conceptions on how to go about such things.

In keeping with this theme, Rei actually had a roll of trashbags around. It was in yet another small cardboard box, together with scissors, cutlery and some old newspapers, all of it covered in dust, but it was there, and so far completely unused. There was a pattern to this behaviour, Shinji felt, but he couldn't quite grasp it. For now, he was simply happy he did have trashbags to work with.

It was quite the labour to be done, but Shinji didn't mind. He had always been a tidy person. Cleaning up was better than… than what Rei was doing for his sake now. As he picked up things from the floor or swept away dust from the drawer, he got into a real flow of things. It was a bit embarrassing for a boy, but it seemed he always had had more a knack for this than fighting. However, even that wasn't so bad. Fighting was something Rei could do by herself. _This_ here gave him an outlet to show his gratitude towards the bluehaired girl.

At first, he had been glad that Mari's offer of service had given him a girl to call upon in such questions, and also somebody who would keep close-mouthed about it. However, Mari's advise had turned out to be rather… _unhelpful_. Her first suggestion about how Shinji could thank Rei was to remind him of all the hour hotels in the city. Her second suggestion had been to grab and kiss Rei. And as third suggestion she had pleaded that he could at least give Rei a small peck. By that time, Shinji had been reduced to a redheaded stuttering mess who could only wave his hands to signal Mari that no, he certainly wouldn't do that.

Only then had she suggested flowers, even though she had called that idea 'boring'. To Shinji, it had seemed a very good idea at the time.

Rei watched intensely as he worked his way through her apartment. Normally, he would have found that a bit annoying, him doing all the work and she just watching. However, it seemed the bluehaired girl truly didn't know what to do. Watching and learning as he cleaned up her apartment was hence maybe really the best she could do.

A small bit of red coloured his cheeks when he mentally admitted to himself that, besides, there were worse things than Rei standing nearby and watching him. He still didn't want to burden her with all those strange impulses and desires that she seemed to increasingly awaken in him, but even so having her around simply felt _good_. The world felt _stable_ when she was around, like nothing could happen. Even if the greatest catastrophe were to break out now, she would protect him. She always was taking care of him.

And so he would take care of her.

"Say, Ayanami..." he said, looking up from the trashbag. "You don't have much in the way of furniture do you?" And in a mutter, "Or in the way of anything else."

"It is sufficient," she merely replied.

"Well, there isn't much I can do about furniture, but… the walls could be painted, you could have something like pictures or posters on them… maybe some more pillows… just to make it look nicer here, you know?" Shinji suggested. "Ah… of course, only if you like."

"Nicer," Rei echoed softly and looked around in the room. Finally, she said, "I don't know much about what is nice."

"Ah well… hrm…." Shinji didn't quite know what to say about that. It sounded sad, but he didn't know what he could do about it.

"How do you know what is nice?" Rei asked.

"Ah… well, uh… everyone has their own… I mean, normally you just look at… and…" Shinji really didn't know what to say to that. It was just so strange!

"Could you show me?" Rei inquired.

"I mean, we could go to the stores together..." Shinji began to suggest awkwardly. _But_ you _are supposed to like it, not me…_

Rei immediately interrupted him. "Yes."

"Yes?" Shinji inquired.

"We will go to the stores together," Rei confirmed.

Shinji smiled awkwardly. _Well, that was blatant._ He felt hot, and did his best to not think about what this could mean. So he just returned to work.

There wasn't much left to be done, though. The apartment also had an old broom which looked like it hadn't been moved out of the corner against which it was leaned for months or years, so Shinji began sweeping the ground. He actually had to cough once or twice, as so much dust had gathered there. _And Rei not only sleeps here but also walks on this barefoot, changes in here and err…_ Unbidden, certain memories rose in him. _Yes. She definitely changes in here._

Since sweeping was so monotone, his thoughts began to wander without conscious control over them. A certain part of him wondered how it would be if Rei were in the same state as he had found her last time he had been here. It did make for some very pleasant images and thoughts in his absent minded daydream. But when he caught himself and also noticed that Rei, of course, was still there, right next to him in fact, his face was turning a dark red. It wasn't just that he had thought of her that way, but it also embarrassed him how good those thoughts had felt.

"I… ah, I think that's as much as I can do for now," he told Rei, quickly trying to change his thoughts back to the task at hand. "Anything more will require more material and preparation."

He noticed Rei wasn't looking at him. Instead, she was looking at the floor in front of her. Even that could not hide her red cheeks, though. "Thank you."

Shinji still felt the heat on his own cheeks. "It was no problem. Don't you think your room looks nicer now?"

Rei looked up again, and then around. "...yes."

Shinji looked at the flowers in their bottle on the small desk, and then back at Rei with a soft smile. "So tell me… do you want the flowers here? As decoration? Or…"

Rei looked at the flowers, at Shinji, back at the flowers. Then she shook her head. "I still don't like flowers."

"That's okay," Shinji told her, the smile still on his face. "You need to like it here. You can… I suppose you can just throw them away."

Rei's face got a puzzled look. "You aren't disappointed?"

"I'm glad I could help you here," Shinji explained. "That's better than giving you flowers."

Rei didn't react to that. She just kept on looking at him. Strangely, this didn't make Shinji nervous. He was often so anxious about having said or done something wrong when people didn't react to him, and felt judged under their stares, but here… there were just Rei's red eyes, and those had always promised safety to Shinji. Fascinating, amazing red eyes in a face of alabaster, surrounded by hair of the colour the ocean once was.

A captivating image.

Shinji's reverie was disturbed by loud, blarring noises. Outside there suddenly was a high-pitched wailing sounding throughout the entire city, while at the same time the mobile phones of both Rei and Shinji went off at their highest volumes.

"The angel alarm..." Shinji stated the obvious. There was fear in his voice. "We should… we need…"

He was about to run outside, but Rei merely lightly grabbed his upper arm. "Section 2 will soon come. They will take us to the Geofront"

 _Oh, of course._ That did make the most sense. The pilots of course would not take the train to an emergency. Shinji was unsure what to do now. Wait here? Just stand around? Rei, meanwhile, simply sat down on her bed.

"You should sit as well," she simply told him. "You have just worked a lot."

It didn't really sound like an invitation, more a statement of fact or a medical advice, but eventually, Shinji did hesitantly sit down next to her. _Section 2…_ Officially, NERV's security and intelligence branch, but Shinji thought of them more as NERV's _henchmen._ The guys who always had him in their eyes, the guys who had brought him back to Misato when he had ran away. They would _ensure_ that the pilots would all be there, that they would go into their Evangelions, enter those LCL-filled entry plugs, smell its blood-like odour, wait terrible seconds until the launchpad would start, get out into the open to see what horror they would face now, and then and then and then….

"You won't pilot. I will. I will protect you."

Shinji turned his head around to find Rei looking straight at him. As nearly always, there was no facial expression on her, just that intense look. Shinji smiled back weakly.

 _I'm so pathetic that I_ need _her protection… and her reassurances._

He hadn't lied to Kaji. He trusted Rei, and hence would let her pilot if she said she was ready and willing to do that job. But he still felt so small whenever it became apparent how much he _needed_ her – not only physically, not only as the one who took over the job, but apparently also mentally. _Weak, weak, weak…_

And he just couldn't shake off this fear that had suddenly befallen him as soon as he had heard the angel alert, which was still wailing outside. It made it hard to focus. Shinji felt his nerves fraying. He _knew_ he wouldn't have to pilot, but he would go to NERV, would put on that plugsuit, just in case, just like he always had and then…

Something brushed against his hand. Another hand, soft, small, gracile and somewhat cold, had taken it. Rei's hand. He didn't look around to see her. He only looked down, blushed…

...and smiled a little.

He didn't know how to react to that. A girl… no, _Rei_ , was holding his hand. And yet that was exactly what he had needed. This was far from the relationship gossip that seemed to dominate the talks of their classmates at times. This was something that seemed to go deeper.

Even so, he _still_ had no idea how to react. He felt a little nervous about _that_ now, and also felt a bit hot and awkward, but that was okay. He just didn't move, except for the hand Rei had taken now also taking hers, their fingers intertwining. He didn't think about what that could mean. The only thing mattered was her comforting presence.

He didn't react at all. The two just sat there, hand in hand, until the Section 2 agents were opening Rei's door.

* * *

Kensuke cursed under his breath. He had come _so close_ to beating his old high score!

 _Oh well…_

One couldn't become a regular arcade visitor without being a good loser. Kensuke in general felt little frustration at setbacks and losses. Life always went on. His only frustration was how empty and unfulfilling that life was sometimes. Nothing he did _mattered_ in the grand scheme of things. Nations fought wars, angels attacked, and he was just a random middle schooler somewhere in Japan.

Playing games let him forget that for a time. And watching mecha anime, gathering every obscure tidbit of military news or rumours, or painting mecha or jetfighter models… that let him imagine for some moments that he _could_ maybe matter. That an actual mecha organization was in town, actual mecha pilots in his class, and actual mecha fights happening now and then, that was exciting for him, but it also added to the frustration: It was so close, but he had no part in it.

He had in fact had one association with it all, but he had fucked that up. Yes, Shinji quitting in the face of all the pain and hurt, that was not how it was _supposed_ to be – it just felt wrong to Kensuke on a primal level. But the hero getting shouted at, that was just not right, either. That happened, but usually marked the people doing so as assholes, at least in that moment.

 _Godsdamnit. I was such an idiot. I lost the connection to mecha piloting I had, and worse, I probably made things even more miserable for Shinji._

The ex-pilot's freakout in the aquarium had made it obvious how hard everything had been for him – and how cold-hearted Kensuke had been. Ever since, Kensuke had been unable to really talk with Shinji, feeling too embarrassed. And as for the other pilots…

He looked around in the arcade hall. He saw arcade cabinets, some of them just simple boxes and some really sophisticated machines with special seats and special controls. He saw retro neon lights, a dirty and used carpet and only some few visitors, mostly boys somewhat older than him… but no Asuka.

He sighed. The girl hadn't come the previous two days, either. Desperately looking for a way to undo his mistakes, but believing he had fucked up for good with Shinji, he had reached out to another pilot. Granted, it didn't hut how easy on the eye Asuka was, but that was also true for a couple of other girls in the class who were considerably less dangerous to approach.

...yeah okay, she _was_ in fact smoking hot. Ever since she had first presented herself to the class, Kensuke's eyes had always been drawn to her. As a foreigner with just a small amount of Japanese heritage, and a redhead besides, she was obviously exotic. An exotic, hot female mecha pilot! And her standoffish nature only added her to her aura. It was like she knew what she was worth, and Kensuke could appreciate that.

But of course such a girl, attractive, intelligent and a mecha ace pilot besides, would never want to have anything to do with him. He should have seen that coming. He truly hadn't intended to ask her out for a date. He truly was looking for someone, _anyone_ , who could share his enthusiasm for gaming, and he had wanted to undo his fuckup with Shinji. But that had probably been presumptuous of h…

 _Oh gods. There she is!_

Kensuke saw the distinctive fluff of red hair entering the arcade hall. Asuka was wearing short jeans and a simple pale red shirt. Come to think of it, he had never seen her in her school uniform outside of school or her way to and from there. She had her typical facial expression of dismay and standoffishness, looking around as if the whole building really was beneath her level… but she _did_ in fact show some interest in the various machines and games.

 _I… I should go to her…_

But suddenly, Kensuke was nervous. Asuka kept looking around, eventually just standing in the middle of the hall at an intersection of arcade cabinets marked on the stained carpet by a circle of nearly washed out yellow, with her arms crossed. People seemed to automatically stay a good distance away from her. She looked very good in those short jeans, but her entire posture was signalling 'aloof' and 'unapproachable'. But it was also clear she didn't quite know what to do here.

So Kensuke gulped, and then waved over to her. "Hey, Shikinami! Want to check out this game?"

Asuka jerked her head around immediately stared daggers at him. _Oh gods. That was too artificially cheerful, wasn't it? I should have gone over to her and said hello first… but that would have been way too formal; this_ isn't _a date after all…_

However, Asuka then did walk over to him, in large, aggressive strides. Kensuke didn't know whether to be relieved or to be even more afraid. And he tried his best to not keep staring at her legs.

"So, this is the arcade hall you meant," she said.

"Ah… yes," Kensuke simply answered.

She flipped her hair. "Hm, doesn't look like much. If there hadn't been so much shouting in the apartment…"

"Ah… shouting?" Kensuke asked, only to realize belatedly that this was probably none of his business.

However, Asuka merely shrugged. "My former guardian, the one I had in Germany, came over to visit Misato. The two argued. I don't know about what; I left as soon as the shouting started for real."

"Oh," Kensuke merely replied.

An awkward pause ensued. Finally, Asuka asked, "So, what are you doing here apparently every day?"

Kensuke managed a grin. "Wanna give it a try?"

It turned out that Asuka really had a natural knack for video games. Even though she hadn't played a single one of the games in the arcade before, she was pretty good at holding her own against Kensuke. Or maybe Kensuke just was a bit distracted. Asuka was quite lively at the arcade machine or the controller, twisting and bending even when there was no need to. And that was goddamn hot – almost as much entertainment as the games themselves.

But she also was an incredible risk-taker. Sometimes that worked, and Kensuke was just overwhelmed by Asuka suddenly charging ahead blindly. But most of the time it _didn't_. And that behaviour only increased when they were playing an Augmented Reality game in one corner of the hall.

"You should be a bit more careful, maybe," Kensuke advised after he had won another match. "I mean, you're really good at that. So don't throw games like that!"

Asuka just scoffed. "It isn't like losing means much. Might as well go for the jugular then."

"Yeah, I suppose that's true," Kensuke agreed. It was a good attitude to have. "But…"

"I don't even feel it when I lose," Asuka continued.

Now Kensuke stopped paying attention to the electronic game pistol in his hand, and turned around to her. "What do you mean?"

Asuka shrugged. "It's kinda like the simulators in my training. Just without feedback."

"Feedback?" Kensuke asked.

"Light electric shocks," Asuka answered, in her usual disinterested, dry voice. "Just enough for pins and needles. At least at first."

"Ahhh..." Kensuke answered. That seemed… _off._ Truth be told, Kensuke had never greatly considered what mecha pilot _training_ could be like. But it didn't quite fit in with the vague expectations he had.

"Another round?" Asuka asked, still sounding the same.

"Ah… alright, yeah," Kensuke confirmed.

For a newbie, Asuka was very good. Normally somebody who had never played that game before shouldn't give so much trouble to Kensuke, who had played it dozens if not hundreds of times. He really respected her skill. It sure seemed that finally he had found an equal sparring partner. Nonetheless, she _was_ in fact new to the game, and that meant she lost most of the time.

And that seemed to increasingly agitate her.

"Ah damn, I'm getting exhausted, Shikinami," Kensuke finally said, suddenly very aware of his scrawny and untrained body. "Let's call it a day?"

"Already?" Asuka scoffed. "I've only just warmed up. I'll begin defeating you from now on."

Kensuke grinned lopsidedly. "If you say so."

"We'll do some more rounds," Asuka stated as if she had authority here. "I'm capable of outplaying you."

This dodged insistence confused Kensuke. "Uh… well…"

"You'll just leave me at having lost most times?" Asuka, well… _accused_ him.

"It's just a game," Kensuke mumbled, unsure what was happening.

Again, Asuka scoffed. "But one I could certainly win! I'm good enough!" She seemed almost… _fearful_. "I really am."

"I… I believe you," Kensuke said. "You did really good for a newbie."

Asuka suddenly… stopped. She just stopped all movement and remained silent. Then finally she spoke up again in a dark voice. "Yeah, okay."

Now Kensuke was worried. _What was that all about? That was no normal reaction to some lost games._ Kensuke had seen sore losers before, but that wasn't it. That had been outright despair. _But why…? What did she fear?_

Asuka was whispering something to herself. Kensuke could only hear part of it, but that made him even more concerned. "… _nothing will happen…_ ".

"Well, we… we can resume this tomorrow," Kensuke suggested. "I don't think something will happen today, right?" He tried a reassuring smile.

"I suppose," Asuka muttered.

It was just then that the angel alert began wailing outside the arcade hall.


	6. Sahaquiel

Despite all the architectonic and interior design attempts to make the place appear open and welcoming, at its heart NERV Headquarters still was a giant maze. There were entire wings that Shinji wasn't sure whether they had been used in the last five years or so at all; if anybody except cleaning and maintenance crews had even only so much as entered them. It seemed for every little specialized task there was a particular room in the building, so it didn't surprise him greatly that there was a ready room for pilots that he had never seen before.

 _So much stuff. Simply for sending us out to suffer._ It seemed to him NERV HQ should be small, cramped, stark. That would have seemed to be more in line with what they made them do: A matter of cruel necessities. Shinji felt the place should reflect that. Instead, they made it very comfortable for the people who send out others to do the dirty work and suffer for them. Even this ready room was flooded with light, which shone upon a small kitchen counter, couches, a table, four vending machines and even a foosball table.

It all seemed inappropriately comfortable to him.

Not that they would still send _him_ out to suffer anymore. That would only happen when a pilot had fallen but their unit somehow remained intact and had been retrieved. Shinji knew himself that the chances for that were very small, and if it happened chances were a pilot had… had…

He breathed in and out.

In any case, it didn't _feel_ like that to him, though. He had been rushed to the Geofront in a Section 2 car, had ran through the corridors to the locker room, had hastily changed into a plugsuit… so basically, exactly the same routine as before his two deployments against 'Shamshel' and 'Ramiel'. And he felt anxious just like before a sortie as well, like he had never left active service at all. _I'll never be free of this world._ Therefore, he had no problem with just sitting here and doing nothing. Rationally, he knew of course that eventually the sortie would happen, but it was easy to pretend that it was something far off.

Not everyone agreed with that.

"If they make us wait here I could as well have stayed where I was," Asuka grumbled.

Mari chuckled. "You know how it is, Princess. 'Hurry up and wait'. Routine for soldiers since forever."

"It's inefficient," Asuka muttered, but didn't complain further.

 _I'm not a soldier. I never wanted to be one. None of us should be._ But Shinji didn't articulate his thoughts.

A grave silence followed, as the wait dragged on. Asuka paced around in the room. Shinji just couldn't understand her; she seemed anxious for the battle to start. Such an attitude was completely alien to him. Mari was even worse. Sunk into one of the couch chairs, she sat there with a smug smile on her face, a coke can with straw in her hand, and humming a pop melody – like nothing in the world could be the matter, like she wouldn't soon face death.

" _I was swimmin' in the Caribbean; animals were hiding behind the rock…"_

So as always, Rei's serene silence was the most palatable reaction to him. She sat half across him in a seating group. Not knowing what else to do, Shinji smiled at her. She had been looking right back, and now she blinked, as if in surprise. Then she looked down. It was hard to tell, but the corners of her mouth seemed to bend slightly upwards. _Huh_. Shinji was surprised and slightly embarrassed, but also felt comforted.

" _Herr im Himmel_ ," Asuka cursed, "How long do they want to let us..."

It was then that Misato practically _burst_ into the room. "The Evangelions are currently being prepared for launch," she immediately said without any prelude, her voice firm and loud. "The angel is literally falling from orbit. It has an even stronger AT Field than Ramiel, which we have so far been unable to penetrate. It is targetting the Tokyo-3 region, most likely the Geofront, though spatial distortions from its AT Field make it impossible to tell for sure. If it lands, it will create a crater fifteen clicks deep, evaporating the city. Do all of you understand?"

Shinji had basically _jumped up_ from his couch chair as reaction to Misato's quick entry; only now did he see Ritsuko entering the room behind her. He just nodded dumbly. He felt somewhat overwhelmed, but he had in fact understood the gist of Misato's sudden explanation.

Rei affirmed with a soft "Yes,", Mari with a cheery "Sure do", and Asuka… Asuka turned around from her pacing and grunted. "So what can I do?"

Misato grinned. "Catch it."

" _What?"_ Asuka exclaimed. Mari laughed.

"We will spread the EVAs throughout Tokyo-3," Misato explained. "That way, we will cover the largest amount of territory. Once you see the angel, you are to race towards it, and catch it with your AT Fields at maximum. They should be able to delay the angel's fall until it can be killed."

" _Should..._ " Shinji muttered. The pilots got no input in those crazy plans; they would simply take all the deadly risk.

"I can do that," Asuka announced. None of the other two girls said anything, though Mari lounged in her chair as if this all didn't matter.

"Good," Misato answered almost absent-mindedly. "We..."

" _Alone_ ," Asuka interrupted her.

Misato shook her head. "That won't be possible. We must minimize our risks. We can't afford to leave any area of the potential landing region uncovered or undercovered."

"It won't exactly minimize risks if I have to work with those two," Asuka answered dismissively, nodding towards both Mari and Rei. "I will save the world!"

"Asuka, that's an order!" Misato told her strictly.

Even though it wasn't directed at him, Shinji flinched. _Orders…_ It seemed to him he had constantly been ordered around ever since his father had called him to this city. And Asuka had been in NERV far longer than him.

Meanwhile, the redhead's face had darkened. It seemed like she would burst soon, but she didn't say anything. Instead, Mari now jumped up from her chair. There was an insolent grin on her face as she looked Misato in the face. "So that's the plan? _Hope_ an Evangelion will be near enough that thing to catch it, _hope_ the Evangelion won't just be crushed, and _hope_ yet another unit will be close enough nearby for it to rush over and kill the angel? No wonder the Princess is pissed, what with such a weak showing from Command." Now her grin was almost insubordinate.

"Mari..." Misato's tone was dark and threatening.

"What? It's not like you can fire me!" Mari reminded her, that smirk still in its place. "And this is just too much fun."

"Do it better then!" Misato snapped. "As is, that is exactly the plan!"

"And they call me crazy!" Mari laughed. "But don't worry, Colonel Buxom, I love crazy! Consider me in!"

Misato rubbed the bridge of her nose, but then smirked. "I even have a surprise for all of you. Now let's get going."

Everyone got in motion to leave – everyone except Shinji, who would spend the battle here, in the ready room. He saw that by chance, Rei was at the tail end of the group. Gently, Shinji grabbed her shoulder. The bluehaired girl stopped and looked at him questioningly.

"Ah… ah… s-sorry," Shinji stuttered. "It's just… I wanted to tell you..." Rei tilted her head, clearly confused by his behaviour. "Please come back safely, okay?"

"Oh," Rei voiced.

Shinji gulped and continued looking in her face. "If you do, I'll… we can do something together, maybe? You'd deserve to... I dunno... have some fun? And if you… if you don't, then I… I wouldn't know what… if you were hurt… or, or…"

Shinji couldn't finish the sentence. For one second, the two just stood there, looking at each other. Then Rei raised a hand and softly touched Shinji's cheek. His eyes got wide. It only lasted two seconds, then Rei turned and followed the others. But it left behind a very bewildered Shinji.

* * *

A predatory grin appeared on Misato's face.

She was standing on the bridge in NERV's headquarters, at the edge of her level of it. The next lower level of the multi-layered bridge was a dozen metres down, but the Lieutnant Colonel could't see it – she was surrounded to all sides by holographic screens filling up the gap in front of her.

Unit 00, piloted by Mari. Unit 01, piloted by Rei. Unit 02, piloted by Asuka. They all were in their waiting positions. Wherever that angel would land, an Evangelion would be reasonably close nearby.

 _We'll get you, you bastard._ One more angel that had appeared. One more angel they would take down. Until finally they would have cleansed world of their taint. Ritsuko had called this Misato's 'vendetta', but even she had to see the angels _had_ to be defeated – and the Lieutnant Colonel would make sure they would be. Even if it was with crazy methods like catching a living comet. Adrenaline was running through Misato's body. _Let Ritsu talk. The only thing that matters is that I'll get that angel._ And all her Evangelions were ready for just that.

"I love it when a plan comes together," Misato muttered.

"Even one as crazy as this one," Ritsuko muttered back. NERV's head scientist was standing just a few metres behind her, and she sounded dismayed. She had been dead-set against the mission, but the Lieutnant Colonel had overruled her.

In fact, she was standing, as she so often did, right behind Maya's terminal, her hand probably on the back of Maya's chair, and her assistant was chuckling now. Misato just ignored it. Technically, this was somewhat undermining her authority, but then, it was just about certain that Ritsuko would have told Maya everything about how she had been overruled anyway. The two were thick as thieves.

In fact, there had always been rumours about the two in Headquarters. However, Misato knew there had also always been rumours about Ritsuko and _her_ in college – even after she had begun trading very public displays of affection with Kaji. _Some_ people would always see something that wasn't there.

And if Misato were honest, she had to admit that this plan Ritsuko would have complained about to Maya was indeed somewhat crazy. Unfortunately, it was also the only plan that was really _doable_. So she had decided to even the odds a bit. Citing vital mission necessity, she had requisitioned as of yet untested NERV prototypes. If she was starting a crazy mission, she could as well go for broke.

"So, Asuka, what do you think?" she asked with a certain satisfaction in her voice. "Wanna give it a try?"

There was movement on the large holographic screen showing Unit 02 at its current location. At first, it was only a shaking that went through the unit. But then, in a second try, there was fire and smoke from the area of its feet, and suddenly the unit darted up around 20m straight into the air.

When it had come down again, a small, semi-transparent window showing Asuka's face in the entry plug appeared layed over the image of Unit 02. "Jumpjets..." She sounded incredulous.

"You have training in aerial manoeuvres after all," Misato answered. "The Ninlil-III jumpjets allow you to jump up to 350m into the air."

"Or should," Ritsuko muttered behind her. "If everything goes well. Which isn't tested."

Misato's face got hard. She didn't need to be reminded of that fact. The whole mission was ramshackle and risky enough as was. Things like the jumpjets would get them the needed extra edge, given the mission profile, tested or not.

Asuka looked oddly serious – or maybe just determined. After all, with that little improvement of her unit, she would now indeed have the chance to save the world again, as was their job. Even so, she looked so grim, Misato tried to cheer her up. "I bet you'll do it, Asuka. You'll save the world."

Now Asuka grinned, a predator's grin just like Misato's. "Yes. I will. Only I have the training necessary for those things, and with them it will be me – _I_ will do it!" And in a mutter: "I'll prove it to them all…"

It made Misato feel a bit uncomfortable. The mission could be seriously hampered if Asuka decided to just ignore the others and go it alone. However, the Lieutnant Colonel knew that this was Asuka's motivation. The pilot of Unit 02 _had_ to have that, so Misato didn't comment.

So instead, she defaulted to cheery again. "You hear that, Mari? Asuka is going for the kill."

Unit 00 was shown on another screen. Misato had barely gotten used to the new blue paint, but now there was another chance: both arms now ended in large, powerful drills.

Mari's image appeared on the screen. The girl half-sat, half-laid on her back in her entry plug, with buds in her ears and a can of soda, specially sealed against the LCL, in her hand. Misato had to actively prevent herself from having a dumb look on her face. _Who has authorized that? We have a combat mission on our hands!_

"What the princess wants, the princess usually gets," she merely commented. There was a shiver going through her body, which continued seamlessly in a rocking back and forth that was at best semi-rhythmical to a song she was beginning to hum.

"No ambitions yourself?" Misato asked her. "You have your drills back now, after all."

Beneath the layer showing the pilot, Unit 00 held its arms up began to rev up the drills.

"Oh god, my drills!" Mari laughed. "Vroom, vroom, vroom!" And then, out of a sudden, in a rather dark voice: "Vrooom."

"Eh… right," Misato answered. "The Crimson Face, Mark 3 – believe it or not, this model is specifically designed to penetrate AT Fields. Something about the 'Allegorical Principle'. Ritsuko told me the discovery of that principle has been all the rage in Metaphysical Biology circles the past few years. And with that whammer of an AT Field we have at our hands, you might need them."

"Interesting," Mari answered, her voice still dark – but the she began to cackle. "Wahahaha. Oh, this will be fuuun."

 _Well. At least she is motivated._

"And we have something for you as well, Rei," Misato continued.

Unit 01, Shinji's former unit, stood entirely still, and the window showing Rei's face betrayed no motion, either. The blue-haired girl hadn't reacted to Misato at all.

The Lieutnant-Colonel sighed. "We have equipped you with a prototype advanced version of the prog-knife. You still have a prog-knife in your left shoulder pylon, in case the prototype doesn't work, but in your right shoulder plyon there is the… ah… the…" She turned around to Ritsuko for help.

The scientist stood tall, looking right towards Rei's window. Light reflected from her glasses.

"The Experimental Double Shadow Quantum State Blade 'Delilah'," she announced almost ceremoniously.

"...we need to get you off coffee," Misato muttered. " _And_ get you a new hobby."

Ritsuko simply ignored what Misato had said. She had much training in that. "It looks like a normal prog-knife and will cut like one, but it is actually three blades in one: The material one and two that will appear when the knife is swung, which will trigger a change in quantum states. Following the material blade there will be a blade of solid light and one of solid sound. Understood?"

"Yes," Rei merely replied.

Misato waited for more to come. A confirmation of readiness, a comment on the mission, a promise or boast to be successful. After all, it was only fair Rei would get her time as well.

...There was nothing.

"Ah… very well then," Misato spoke up again, now sounding entirely official. "Here's the plan then: Enemy ETA is in a little less than two hours. We have distributed you through Tokyo-3 based on the estimated landing zone. Everyone of you is covering a certain area; Asuka's is larger than the others due to her jumpjets. You will be repositioned whenever new data about the enemy's trajectory comes in. Once the enemy has reached a certain proximity, you will all run towards the projected impact point. However, we cannot fully rely on sensory data due to the atmospheric distortions the enemy creates. You will have to use your own visual data – trust your eyes and correct your course as necessary. Understood?"

A triple yes in varying volumes came back.

Misato smiled impishly. "Well then. For now, you wait. Seems like Mari had the right idea about bringing some music along."

* * *

Asuka felt a strange mix of hopefulness, anxiety and sheer boredom. This, finally, was her chance to prove herself on Japanese soil. This was what she had been trained for all those years. She had gone through countless hardships because it had always been expected of her as an EVA pilot. She had been selected as such because she was better than anyone else. And now she would fulfill her purpose.

If she won here, nothing else would matter anymore.

Of course, that also was the source of her anxiety. That little gaming session with Kensuke had ended up unexpectedly uncomfortable. Only belatedly did she realize she had lost her cool, something that was not supposed to happen to an EVA pilot. _And all that because of silly games! That's what happens when you don't keep to yourself._ Sure, her memories were not all sunshine and butterflies, but that was just part of being an elite soldier.

But compared to this mission, those frivolous games didn't matter. What she would show _here_ was what would matter.

...or at least once the mission proper would start.

Evangelion Unit 02 was currently standing straight and still, towering over a multilayered highway cross next to it, a labyrinthine knot of routes at the entrance to Tokyo-3's urban area that barely reached to the Unit's waist. The streets had all been cleared now, Tokyo-3 entirely evacuated. Instead of rush hour traffic, a single NERV truck on one road now: A mobile energy provider to which Unit 02 was connected through an umbilical cord.

For the last hour or so, that truck and the Unit had shifted positions half a dozen times, always repositioning themselves according to new data. Asuka was sick of doing nothing more than walking her mecha around. She closed her eyes and breathed out. Bubbles formed in the LCL surrounding her. For a brief moment, she became aware of the liquid's blood-like smell.

 _Hurry up, angel boy._

When she opened her eyes again, Asuka could see the landscape all around her – blocky buildings, broad streets, fields and forests in the other direction. Being in an EVA was really like being on top of the world: An 80m giant controlled by a girl of 1.64m.

A dispassionate male voice came through the entry-plug's comm system. "Angel has entered atmosphere. Final estimated landing location is being calculated… we have a result, Lieutnant Colonel."

 _Here it goes._

"Alright." That was Misato's voice, serious but upbeat. "Target location is being transmitted to your units' nav systems. Prepare for launch!"

Asuka began grinning viciously as she had her mecha go down into a runner's start position. Confidence began to flow through her mind. Now that the action was about to begin she was completely calm.

"Ready… and go!" Misato ordered.

Asuka felt sympathetic feedback from her EVA as warmth began to spread in her back. The plug of the umbilical cord had just been blown off. The countdown of Unit 02's internal battery was now shown in red, just next to Asuka's head. At the same moment, the pilot began to sprint.

The asphalt of the street broke open as giant red boots tore into it. Fragments of it and of brown earth flew up into the air all around the Unit. It took several steps until Asuka's machine had found a secure grip on the ground, but her superior balance made that a non-issue. Just like a human sprinter, the Unit got faster with every step, and eventually Asuka could see buildings fly past her on both sides.

Her grin got wider as she leaned forward aggressively in her seat. This was her domain. This was where she had achieved mastery. This was what made her better than anybody else. She got her multi-thousand ton war machine to run through the streets of a deserted city without any great effort at all. Toko-3, this great ultramodern city, was her playground now.

It was… _validation._ She began running faster and faster, carried away by this enthusiasm.

She didn't even look where Unit 02 was going. It wasn't like anything could have stopped the mecha at all. She entered a canal in the suburbs, water splashing a dozen metres high, and tore through a bridge, destroying it without ever really having noticed it. She only spared a quick look to her navigation system. _I'll manage it. I'll_ manage _it. I'll defeat it._

Her zone was the largest after all. Chances were that it would be her catching the angel and saving the world.

" _Pizdets!_ " Mari cursed over the comms, before falling into a mad giggle.

Asuka just scoffed at such a lack of discipline.

Trees began spreading in front of her, but she didn't care. It was only a very light pine forest, interspersed with fields and meadows. Unit 02 just aggressively swept aside all the vegetation now growing on all sides. And when power line running its course through the fields was in her way, Asuka simply had her machine jump over it – and right down a cliff behind it. For a moment, it was almost like flying, almost like the fight against the clockwork angel. She could see farms and roads and rice paddies below her.

A sharp pain went through Asuka's legs as the unit landed. Her face became hard. She knew how to ignore such pain. Unit 02 didn't even stop – it just continued running.

"Pilots!" Misato's voice sounded urgent, almost panicked. "Enemy trajectory has changed. Target is accelerating! Submitting new data!"

"No way," Asuka breathed, looking at the nav system. The estimated landing point was now squarely in Mari's zone. " _No wayyy!"_ she screamed. She would not let have that pink-suited four-eyes get that victory!

"You can still reach it, Mari!" Misato shouted through the comms. She sounded anxious about the prospect, though. "Just hold out there with your AT strength at max until…"

" _It's miiiine!"_ Asuka screamed once again. Already, Unit 02 had made a near-180° turn, its upper body hovering just so above the ground. Several fields and rice paddies were left behind entirely torn up by the manoeuvre.

Trees made way to fields, which made way to single villas, which again made way to suburbs. Unit 02 raced through them all, with Asuka not caring a dint where the machine's boots landed. She had a city – a _world_ to save, after all. And it would be _her_ doing that.

With a loud annoyed groan, Asuka took all her momentum from the run and jumped upon parking house, a broad box of a building. Car alarms went off as several vehicles were crushed and the entire upper deck finally crumbled, but by that point Unit 02 had already leaped further, atop an office building. Parts of that broke off as well, hitting the street in a storm of dust and debris, but the red machine had once again jumped…

…and now Asuka was starting her jumpjets.

"Asuka!" Misato sounded shocked and appalled.

" _Miiine!"_ Asuka repeated, now high up into the air.

She felt an uncomfortable heat in her lower legs, right there where the jumpjets' fire touched Unit 02. And she felt unsteady in the air, much less stable than with her usual flying equipment. But none of this mattered. She was now, literally, above everyone else, and so much closer to her target.

G-forces pressed Asuka into her seat. She barely managed to turn her head and look outside. Below her she spotted the blue of Unit 00, running with its drills raised in the air. _Too late, Four-Eyes. Too late._

She screamed inarticulately as she landed in the middle of some farm buildings, an even harder impact as before. A strong pain remained like after a sprain. It was nothing that Asuka hadn't already felt before, or even trained for. With a mighty roar from her, Unit 02 stood up straight again and unfolded its AT Field at maximum.

As she looked up, she saw a psychedelic vision descending upon her in all the shades of the rainbow. A sphere in black and multicolour, with two gargantuan wings at its sides. It had nearly reached the ground… but now Asuka would stop it. The air around Unit 02 began to shimmer in hues of red. Parts of the nearby building roofs broke off and began floating in the air, as did pieces of the ground, fences, small power line masts, a tractor. _The power of the AT Field – MY POWER!_

The gigantic ball was now directly above her, filling out the entire horizon. Unit 02 raised its hands, and octagons of orange light began to spread out between them and the orb. Asuka tensed herself, willed herself to uphold the AT Field by sheer determination…

...and then she began to scream in sheer agony.

Her entire back was burning. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. It seemed like the skin on her back was just melted off, the flesh seared, and that from her neck to her legs. She screamed, a wild, inarticulate, animalistic sound that echoed through the entry plug and the comm systems. It was all she could do to just continue holding her arms upwards, to maintain the AT Field. Unit 02 stood there, head hanging low, hunchbacked, arms raised above it… shaking, but holding the pose.

Asuka screamed and screamed and screamed. Acid poured from the angel onto the Evangelion, an entire stream worth of it.

It _scorched_ Asuka. Her whole world was nothing but pain and suffering and agony. Her throat became raw and bubbles of air formed in the transparent LCL. Instinctively, without even realizing it, she tried to bring her breathing under control as she had been trained to. It didn't work. Her training seemed paltry compared to this agony.

But she couldn't give way. She had to stand here, under the rain of acid, and feel as her skin peeled off and her flesh was dissolved. A screaming slab of scorched meat, barely aware of what was going on outside of her pain. But she stood strong. She did not give way. _Could_ not give way. She could only stand there and take the pain. She would not surrender. She would simply scream on and on and on.

" _Maaaariii! Pet! Four-Eyes! Reiiii!"_ She panted. " _Shinji! Misatoooo!"_

If Rei gave an answer, it did not come through to Asuka's senses, through the mist of missed breaths and nerves on fire. Mari, though, shouted: "I'm here, Princess! I'm _here!_ " It sounded aggressive, combative and, most of all, loud.

And then, suddenly, a second jolt of pain. For a moment Asuka's screaming just stopped, replacing by a gurgling. Her vision greyed out for a moment… and then she resumed screaming. It felt like her arms were being split, from hand to elbow. Nails were driven into them. Blood poured out of them… out of her _own_ hands, inside the entry plug. It flew as red streams into the surrounding liquid.

" _Maaaari! Come on! Maa…. Maaamaaa!"_

Asuka thought she heard a faint roaring far away, but through all the pain she couldn't be sure. Through eyes clenched in misery, she finally saw something big and blue hurrying through the apocalyptically red sphere of her AT Field.

And she could hear Mari. " _Omae nyaaah mo shindeiru!_ "

Asuka was still screaming. Exhaustion was coming over her, from the pain, from the shouts, from withstanding all this, but getting her throat sore was all she could do. However, even through closed eyes, she could sense lights flickering over her eyelids. When she managed to open them just a little, she saw what she hadn't thought possible: Mari's drills worked. She literally bore herself a way into the angel's AT Field.

Something inside Asuka was angry. All this pain, all this suffering… and now it would be _others_ reaping the benefits of it. Others would kill the angel. She would just get the pain. And yet, all she could wish for was that this pain would end now – _no matter_ how.

"Rei!" Mari shouted.

The blue-haired girl made no sound, didn't reply over the comms, but she was there. Of all the Evangelion units, Unit 01 looked the most fearsome, despite having the most human-like face – or maybe exactly because of that. And now that purple monster was here, jumping into the air, right into the opening Unit 00 had torn into the angel's AT field, prog-knife first.

For a moment, Asuka thought her arms would burst. The pressure on them only seemed to intensify. For two horrible seconds, Asuka felt her arms split along their entire length… and then a flash of white blinded her eyes even while they were closed, only for it to be followed by an immensely loud bang. And when the noise stopped, it was over. No more pressure, no more arms being split, no more rains of acid.

But the pain remained.

Under grunts and heavy breathing, she could see the gigantic angel dissolving as it fell onto the soil… and then it burst. Blood flooded everywhere like a deluge of biblical proportions. _Victory…_ But it wasn't hers. Not truly. All she had done was suffering.

...and then suddenly the pain stopped. The synch had been cut. Asuka let herself fall back into her seat. More air bubbles rose in the LCL as she breathed out in relief. However, this only lasted for a few seconds. The relief from the most agonizing pain had made it seem it had all gone, but it took only some moments until a dull throbbing in her arms made itself known.

Asuka saw that her hands were still covered in thick blood. She raised them and looked at her palms, only two discover ghastly wounds on both of them. Dark blood came pouring out of veritable holes. She sat there like that, looking at her devastated hands, feeling the pain, grunting now and then, until the evacuation crews arrived.

She was moved down from the entry-plug by a crane, as were Mari and Rei at the same time. As soon as she was down on the ground, medics came rushing towards her to bandage her still bleeding hands. She could just stand there and wait for them to be finished. The pain was still there, but now it was manageable. She was used to dealing with a certain level of pain.

For some reason, medics were waiting for Mari as well. However, the girl was not cooperative at all. She aggressively shouted at them, at one point even nearly _attacked_ one of them. Asuka looked at that scene dismissively. It made her think that for all of Mari's clownery in school, this was probably the girl's true personality. _Two-faced, like all of them._

And then there was the reception for Rei. As soon as she had hit the ground, someone came racing towards her like a comet, someone in a plugsuit… Shinji, their purported 'reserve pilot'. He came to a sudden, awkward halt right before having reached her. The two just stood there uncomfortably, looking at each other. Then Shinji broke out in a big smile and laid a hand on Rei's shoulder. The blue-haired girl's lips curled slightly upwards.

Asuka scoffed. _Such nonsense._ And worst of all, it was Rei who had gotten the kill. Rei, who simply had appeared the latest while everyone else had already done the work for her.

 _Damn, the hands do hurt…_ But there was no way Asuka would show that outwardly, of course.

Finally, Asuka could see Misato arriving on the scene. _Must have come by helicopter_. The Lieutenant Colonel walked up to the pilots. "The operation was a success!" she announced cheerfully. "The angel is dead, without any damage to the city. Everything has ended well."

Asuka just glared at her.


	7. Partners

Shinji lay on his futon, his head resting on his hand, his eyes unclosed and looking up at the ceiling. There were plugs in his ears. He was feeling content, and that made him feel guilty.

That huge angel, larger than all the previous ones together, had attacked the day before – and today there had been school as if nothing had happened. If Shinji were still an active pilot, he would have had to deal with classmates, with gossip and talk all around him, with Touji's single-minded interest in the girls' body parts and with the girls' mindless giggling – and all that a mere day after having faced death, after having suffered agony.

As it was, he still had been surrounded by gossips, talk, Touji's antics and girly giggling, but that was okay. With his mind no longer occupied by the previous day's battle, by the trauma and pain and terror, he could even begin to _enjoy_ listening to Touji contemplating which girl had the biggest pair of breasts. Those things were so far removed from worrying about EVAs and angels and life and death battles, and it felt good to be able to only concentrate on them. He felt like he was no longer weighed down in his life.

However, that was exactly the problem. He had that luxury now. Meanwhile, for Rei, Asuka and Mari, things were as bad as they always had been for him. They still were forced deal with the insane reality of having to return to class a day after a battle where they could have died, of having to behave as if this all were completely normal. He was happy to have escaped that fate, but now the three girls were alone with it, and that realization burdened him with guilt.

The next song began to play on his tape. He sighed and turned around on his side, facing away from the door. His sleeping area was still nothing more than a barely cleared part of the room, just a futon surrounded on all sides by paperboard boxes. He wondered when sleep would come.

There was a soft swooping sound behind him. And the next moment he felt something warm pressed against his back… another back.

And he realized to whom it belonged. "A… Asuka…"

"Don't turn around," she told him in a quiet, yet grave and dark voice. "Just let me lay here and be quiet."

Shinji gulped and said nothing. He had no idea what the redhead was doing here, in his room, on his futon. Part of him mentally scoffed about it – she already had gotten his former room, already had cast him out to here. And yet she also stole his space here? But that was the smaller part. He didn't really hold any resentment against her personally, after all. She was just as caught in the situation as him. Mostly he was just confused.

"Why did you pilot, Shinji?" The voice was still dark, almost hoarse. Shinji doubted any other girl in his class would let herself be caught talking like that.

He was surprised. That question seemed to come out of the blue. "Uh…" _Why does she want to know that?_ But then, she was in fact caught in the situation same as him: Caught in the whole NERV business with EVAs and angels, and just like him a ward of Misato's. So he answered, "Truth be told, I never really knew. People just expected me to pilot, and so I did. But even when I did what they wanted, they never spoke positively about it. I agreed to it and yet I had to make efforts just to not get scolded. That's all I could expect there."

"Just like in Germany…"Asuka whispered.

"And so I quit," Shinji continued. "I mean, I know why NERV exists, but… I just couldn't… In the three fights I was in… I got my head smashed in, I got whipped all over, I got my chest pierced through, I got boiled alive… and that all for… for…"

Asuka scoffed. "Yeah. Not everyone is cut out for this. I am."

Shinji quieted down again. He nearly would have turned around now, but he remembered what she had said. So the two just lay back to back and talked. "And why… and why do you pilot?"

"Because that's what I am," Asuka answered. "An EVA pilot. Not everybody could do it. I can."

"It… it makes you special?" Shinji asked.

"Yes," Asuka answered with conviction. But after some seconds she continued with less certainty, "But here..." She trailed off.

"Here?" Shinji inquired after some moments.

"How did you deal with it?" Asuka asked.

Again, Shinji was confused. "Deal… deal with what?"

"When you piloted," Asuka sort-of-explained. "You fought those angels and then… people…"

Now it dawned on Shinji what she meant. It was the very thing that had kept him awake. In a resentful voice, he whispered. "Nobody cares."

"Yes. That," Asuka confirmed. "It's not like people praised or thanked me in Germany. Misato just expected I'd do my training and all that. But that was just training, after all. _Years_ of training, so I can fight angels now."

"Oh," Shinji voiced. _So it has to be even more disappointing for her._ When, after a few seconds, Asuka still hadn't continued, he spoke up quietly, "And they just take that for granted. They take all of us for granted. You, me, Makinami, Ayanami…"

It was liberating to be able to talk about that. To speak about this topic with someone who had suffered the same, someone who agreed with him. _Is that what it's like for most people?_ Maybe Asuka was just a flatmate, but at that moment he felt a deeper connection: As if they weren't just _randomly_ in the same apartment, the same household.

However, there was no reaction from her. Shinji already thought she might have fallen asleep, but finally she did say something. Her voice was hard. "I'm still an EVA pilot. That's still who I am. Someone better. But it's…" She sounded frustrated.

"Disappointing?" Shinji offered.

"Yeah," Asuka confirmed.

Trying to find _anything_ positive he could tell her in this situation, Shinji said, "Well, you… you did well today, I think. In school, I mean. I know how it is to fight and then the next day…"

"As if we were just normal kids," Asuka whispered.

Shinji's answer was full of resentment. "Normal kids who have to fight monsters and don't get anything in return."

"This sucks," Asuka stated.

The ensuing silence now stretched over minutes. Both teenagers just lay there, united in solidary misery. It was not the worst feeling in the world… though Shinji still caught himself wondering now and then how _odd_ it was to lay back to back with a girl, both of them in sleepwear.

Finally, there was rustling sound. Shinji could feel how his back was laid free again. Asuka had risen from the futon.

"This talk… it never happened," she said in a hard voice.

Even now, Shinji still didn't turn around. "Uh… okay. I won't tell anyone."

"It never happened," Asuka repeated. Then she left the room.

Only half an hour later did Shinji turn on his back again, looking at the ceiling once more. _What was that?_ Asuka had felt so alien when she had first arrived. _Someone who enjoys piloting._ But apparently it wasn't for the piloting itself. And now, now she seemed like someone who was surprisingly similar to him.

 _She wants the same as I do._

A faint smile crossed over his face. He was falling asleep. _What… what a strange household._ The NERV officer and her two wards. _Asuka… my thorny older foster sister…_.

* * *

 _Closer… closer… closer…_

Asuka grinned viciously. She had him!

 _And shoot!_

On the arcade screen in front of her, a graphical avatar was shown to disperse into thousands pieces.

"Ah crap!"

Asuka's grin got wider. That had come from the arcade cabinet at the other side from hers. For a moment, she could ignore the pain that began to resurface in her still bandaged hands, now that the adrenaline rush was over. She looked around the corner to see bespectacled face surrounded by unruly light brown hair staring back at her. Kensuke looked dismayed.

"Another round?" Asuka asked.

Kensuke breathed out, let his head hang low and then shook it. "I'm all out of coins, and also all out of energy." He got up from his seat and walked up to Asuka's cabinet. "Man, you're insatiable. And that despite…" He looked at her bandaged hands.

Asuka just shrugged. When she had first arrived again at the arcade this week, Kensuke had protested, saying she was at a disadvantage and he wouldn't want her to hurt herself even further. He hadn't managed to ask _where_ she had gotten the injury from at all, but then there had been a whole lot stuttering involved.

"It sucks, but…" That was an understatement. Even now, days after the battle, the injury hadn't fully healed. And everyone did their best to just ignore the bandages, pretend they weren't there. She shrugged again. The truth was, at least going here gave her something to do, and it was more entertaining than the Wonderswan. She stood up from her own seat. "So you're calling it?"

"Ah… Yeahhhh," Kensuke replied. "I think I have enough of you owning me."

Asuka's natural facial expression was one of disinterest or maybe even contempt, but now she couldn't quite prevent a smirk breaking through it. "Giving up?"

Now it was Kensuke's turn to shrug, and he managed to do so in a fairly non-chalant and collected manner. He looked pathetically scrawny in his boring school uniform. Actually, she had never seen him in any other clothes. Somehow he managed to pull this style off, though, being all legere and with lots of tolerant smiles. "You've gotten quite good at this, Shikinami."

Asuka just scoffed, but that damn smirk was still there. She had gone to the arcade every day this week, and met Kensuke there. It was… well, it was _fun_ , actually. It did beat playing alone on the Wonderswan. Which was a strange new experience for her: She had never needed people for anything. She had always relied on just herself in the EVA training and her studies, and her free time had always been spent alone. She just couldn't _connect_ to other people.

With Kensuke, that was surprisingly easy. She liked video games, and he liked video games. It was all very simple: No school gossip, no talk about the newest TV series or whatever, none of this emotion or understanding nonsense. Just virtually beating the crap out of each other.

Asuka would still say people, as a whole, were not worth any effort, but some of them here were apparently quite alright. Kensuke sure was, and Shinji… well, he was Shinji. Not cut out for piloting, but still a good guy, for all the good that did one in this world. And while both could stand to get a bit more physical exercise, _especially_ Kensuke, they were still easy enough on the eye.

Not that she would show any of that. Her voice still sounded bored and dismissive when she asked, "Did you expect anything else?"

Now that smirk was on Kensuke's face. "Of course not. You… ah… you even managed to save the city from the largest angel yet!" Asuka just kept looking at him. _What has that to do with anything?_ He shrugged. "But I gotta say, it's fun playing with you. Just having a good gaming partner, you know? Heh. Who would've thought a girl… well… uh, I mean… I and a girl… ah…"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. _On the other hand, boys will be boys, I guess. Pathetic._ "Let's just stop there, alright?"

"Ah… ah… right," Kensuke managed to stutter out. "Uh, listen. I'm quite hungry. How about we go somewhere to eat?"

Asuka emitted a sound somewhere between a scoff and an aggressive sigh. "I can't just go out to eat every time it's Misato's turn to cook."

"Hey, how about that: I'll invite you. I'll pay," Kensuke offered. Now Asuka just looked at him flatly. _Seriously? Is he asking me out?_ "I mean… uh… we heard about your victory over the angel. A dinner for the saviour of Tokyo-3?"

"Yeahhh, right," Asuka answered. "That's the ticket. Well, if you're offering, why not."

"I… I really mean it, Shikinami," Kensuke insisted. "You deserve…"

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Asuka dismissed it. She was still annoyed that Kensuke would bring such couple-y stuff into it all, but she wouldn't say no to a free meal. She began heading for the arcade's exit. She heard Kensuke sighing behind her, before he followed her.

The arcade hall filled up the lowest three levels of a highrise building smack in the middle of downtown. Exiting it, one entered one of the busiest intersections of Tokyo-3. The sidewalk was packed with people, walking so dense that Asuka could barely see the street behind all those grey and black suits of the salary men and women. She could hear it, though, a constant cacophony of engine hums that even managed to blend out the usually omnipresent chirping of the cicadas.

Above her were several neon-lights. Hardly notable in the bright light of the day, they gave the whole bloc a distinctly retro look at night. Having been built from the ground up, Tokyo-3's planners had allowed themselves many such architectonical games and references. Having been born way after the neon age, it didn't really mean anything to Asuka, but she supposed the signs did fit well with the arcade hall.

"So, where to?" she asked Kensuke once he had caught up to her in front of the building. She had to raise her voice to even just make herself heard.

Once again, Kensuke shrugged. "I know a place. Come along."

Asuka felt a bit dismayed as she followed the boy. Her having to walk behind somebody else made her feel restless. She hated having to rely on anybody else, and if only for directions, and she disliked even more that she had to do so publicly – that she was following that boy in plain sight of the world, as if she were dependent on him. With slightly lowered head she glanced left and right at the people rushing past her. Some of them looked back. Asuka hated that: Here in Japan, her red hair simply made her stick out, and she hated the attention that generated. Her bandages only added to that, and she was now again acutely aware of them.

 _Meanwhile, all the Japanese folks look like drones. Same black hair, same business clothes or school uniforms, same expressionless faces._ Part of her wished she could as easily submerge in and become part of the anonymous crowd, with nobody paying attention to her. However, she was too proud to colour her hair or walk around in her school uniform. She was not a drone after all, and she also wasn't a school student – or at least, that wasn't her primary identity.

Her hands hurt.

When something finally broke through her grumbling, it was a smell – a delicious aroma of grilled meat. It came from a small building at the street wedged between highrises. Kensuke entered it, and Asuka followed him. By the looks of it, it seemed to be a ramen shop with extra grill, or an izakaya pub without alcohol – something in between. A diner, with a long counter to sit at. With some effort, Asuka read the kanji on the big sign above the counter. The prices seemed reasonable.

 _So that's your big 'thanks', Kensuke? Yeah right._ But it did smell delicious…

Daylight from opened front windows filled the diner. There was an archaic jukebox in a corner, a counter facing the staff area and one facing away from it. Most guests seemed to be older male youths. Asuka had seen some of them in the arcade hall before, while others looked like college students. Even so, at this time of the day, there was still plenty of space at the counters. Which was good, because Asuka would have absolutely refused to sit elbow to elbow with strangers, or be surrounded by peopleon all sides. Kensuke was fun, maybe, but _people_ were still exhausting.

So even though she and him of course sat next to each other, she made sure that enough space remained between them. Kensuke got himself some ramen dish with meat, but that was too bland for Asuka, especially after having experienced all those smells from the grill. She took yakitori, skewered chicken. It wasn't anything fancy, but as she took her first bites she had to admit it tasted really good: The meat was light, but flavourful and the salty-sweet sauce fit perfectly to it.

"I know it probably isn't up to your standards," Kensuke said apologetically. When she just raised an eyebrow at that, he explained himself, "I mean… you as an elite pilot, you're probably used to far better stuff."

Asuka gulped the food in her mouth down to scoff at that. "You haven't had to endure Misato in the kitchen. I'd volunteer to take over her turns as well, but that would mean letting her get away with her sloppiness."

Kensuke furrowed his brows at that, but then smirked. "So life must be more normal for you pilots than I had imagined. I mean, Shinji, I knew _he_ just kinda fell into that whole role, and didn't… didn't even…" He suddenly stopped. For some minutes there was an awkward silence. Asuka tended to her chicken. The air was filled with background noise from other people's conversations. Finally, Kensuke spoke up again: "By the way, I got some records from the fight. Your flying manoeuvre was really impressive."

 _Oh._ Asuka was kinda annoyed with herself with how much that simple sentence was affecting her, so she just shrugged her shoulders and took up a skewer again. "I've gotten much training in aerial manoeuvres. Since I was six."

"Ah… six?" Kensuke echoed.

"Well, just simulators at that point," Asuka continued. "They shoved me out of an airplane at age nine first."

"Ah…" Kensuke simply voiced. He had bent over a little to scoop up more noodles but now just stopped and looked sideways at Asuka. "That's…"

Asuka took another bite and waited for him to say something, but when nothing came she just shrugged. "It's really safe inside an EVA. A little fall won't really damage it, so it's just a matter of reducing the synch ratio to soften the impact a bit."

"Reduce?" Kensuke asked. "Not cut it?"

She looked at him oddly. "Nothing is learned if you don't feel the impact at all." Kensuke seemed to want to say something again, breathing in as if to speak, but she scoffed over that. "Of course, there was that one time where those idiots didn't even manage the reduction, let alone a cut. That was the day before my tenth birthday as well. Assholes."

"Uh… right," Kensuke answered. "Ah. Well. I guess that training paid off in the end." He sounded a bit awkward. He continued eating, but now at a much less enthusiastic pace. "Good thing you showed an interest in that."

"Eventually," Asuka answered.

"Eventually?" Kensuke echoed.

"Before, they simply made me do it," Asuka told him. She grinned lopsidedly. "I didn't want to get grounded after all."

"Grounded," Kensuke now echoed, then shook his head. "So they just made you do that? That doesn't quite seem right."

"They needed a pilot, didn't they?" Asuka argued, while biting off some meat directly from the skewer. "And little kids, well, they aren't really disciplined. So you need to _make_ them do stuff."

"Even piloting…?" Kensuke muttered, but it sounded more directed to himself. From the corner of her eye Asuka could see that he balled his hand into a fist. Finally, he spoke up again, "I mean, that isn't how you should get pilots. _Make_ people pilot. Shouldn't they…" He trailed off.

"Shouldn't they what?" Asuka asked him. She sounded almost amused. It was incredible how naive Kensuke seemed to be. "There's maybe two or three dozens kids alive in the world who can pilot EVAs, and NERV will find only a fraction of them. Of course they'll make us pilot."

"Make people pilot…" Kensuke muttered now. Asuka had no idea what was up with him. He didn't even touch his noodles anymore.

She looked at him curiously. "Yes…?"

He just shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe I just have no clue about it all. But… It just seems wrong that you couldn't decide for yourself. You should have had that freedom."

Asuka turned her head around in a jerky motion. "How else would kids piloting mechas work?"

She didn't know why or how, but that comment had affected her. Kensuke was now looking away as well. _Decide for myself…?_ she pondered while looking at her hands. Of course children couldn't, and the path that had been chosen for her made her part of an elite. That counted for something. She had never even thought there could have been alternatives to that. She still didn't think so, but…

 _He does._ And that felt somewhat strange to her.

* * *

Shinji felt silly. He stood here in front of a door in the most run-down part of Tokyo-3, with a backpack overflowing with stuff and a bucket of paint in his hand, and with a _penguin_ of all things at his side. _My life. Is. Strange._

Though at least _now_ it was strange in a good way, not strange in a "what are those alien giants which try to kill me" or in a "what is that thing in my head from the EVA" sort of way anymore. By now, he kind of had to admit to himself that going to meet Rei was always a good thing, no matter the that was maybe a bit creepy, but he figured that was alright. He just had to keep himself under control. Rei had already helped him with so much, it wouldn't do to burden her further.

But he couldn't help but smile a bit when the door opened and he saw Rei behind it. As always, she was wearing a school uniform, and as always, she looked right at it him with her piercing red eyes, and there was no real discernible expression on her face… but it was _Rei._ Those sharply cut facial features were lovely, those red eyes and the pale skin were intriguing, and most of all, she always had this aura of serenity and security about her.

He caught himself. He had thought a bit too much about that spotless skin recently as was, and what he had already felt of it. Her hand, her… _Ehem._ "Ah… hello, Ayanami."

"Hello, Ikari," she simply replied in her usual monotonous way. She made no mention of the ill-fitting old clothes, the bucket of paint or the _flightless Antarctic bird._

"Well, ah… sorry, but uh…" Shinji began. Rei simply titlted her head, which only made him sweat even more. "Well, this is Pen-Pen. Misato's warmwater penguin. He… he insisted on coming along." He breathed in to explain the story, how a penguin could have insisted on anyth...

"Understood," Rei merely said, and then stepped aside to let them in.

Pen-Pen immediately entered with a loud " _Wark!_ ". Shinji did a surprised double take before following him. _Well, I guess if you have naturally blue hair nothing will surprise you easily anymore…_

The three came to a halt in Rei's bedroom. Shinji allowed himself a faint smile: The curtains were open, and natural light was coming it. Though in a way this only served to make the barren room appear even starker. The bed, unmade, was the only thing inside that looked in any way of form 'soft'. It made Shinji shudder to imagine sleeping here, living here. _Well, that's what we'll fix, step by step._

There was an awkward silence… or at least, awkward for him. The three just stood in the room, without motion, looking at each other. Shinji got the feeling that Rei could remain like this for hours. She didn't need to speak in order to feel comfortable; she just looked Shinji right in the eyes. Meanwhile, his gaze shifted between her, Pen-Pen and the paint bucket in his hand, always back and forth.

He liked Rei, but communicating with her or trying to do things together with her wasn't always easy. It was worth it, though: She was nice and never hostile… and that was all Shinji was asking for. He could deal with a little weirdness.

Suddenly, Pen-Pen got in motion, waddled up to Rei, and wrapped his wings around her legs in a hug. "Wark!" The girl blinked.

Shinji smiled at the scene. Rei looked down at the penguin, tilted her head, slowly raised her hand, and seemed generally confused as what to do now. "Wark!" Finally, carefully, almost hesitantly, Rei laid her hand on Pen-Pen's head. "Wark!" It sounded content.

This broke the ice. "Ah… I've brought everything along, Ayanami," Shinji told her. "Shall we begin?"

The girl looked up again and nodded.

It was Saturday now. For the entire past week, Shinji had prepared for this idea. In fact, he guessed he had begun to kind of annoy Misato with it. However, painting a room was a bit of a big deal if you had never actually done it before. Even now, Shinji was not quite sure if he had everything required, if he could do it, if he wouldn't screw up… It had been quite an effort to look everything up on the internet, ask Misato (not that she was a great help in matters of housekeeping), ask for money from her, buy everything…

Maybe for adults it was all so easy and trivial, but the whole ordeal with piloting and fighting angels had made Shinji become acutely aware how he wasn't one. He guessed that for pretty much all of his classmates, this would have been a big thing. So normally, he would already have given up. After all, it was just good policy to avoid trouble and hardship if one can. He genuinely believed so; as he saw it, that was how people managed to go through life. So he wouldn't have bothered if this had been just for him.

But it was for Rei. And that had made him very motivated.

There was so much he had to repay her for. She was piloting for his sake. She had helped him at the aquarium. She was putting up with him. _She was piloting for his sake._ That was nothing he could _ever_ repay her for, but if there was a chance, _any_ chance, to be of use to her, he would take it. For once, he had a reason to not run away.

"Maybe you should change into some old clothes you don't need anymore," Shinji told Rei. He himself was wearing old jeans trousers with half a dozen small holes in them and mostly washed out shirt.

"I have several school uniforms," Rei informed him. "They are all equally disposable to me." She began tucking at her uniform. "But I can change into…"

"On second thought," Shinji intervened, and was suddenly reminded what had happened the first time he had been here. "Yeah, on second thought I think this works as is." He chuckled awkwardly. He really didn't want a repeat of that embarrassing scene. Or did he? Part of him was mentally kicking himself.

Shinji and Rei both got working. This wasn't really something where he could show her how it's done, seeing as he didn't really know himself. In fact, barely some minutes into it, he began sweating, unsure if he was doing it right. _Am I laying on the paint too thick? Am I reaching every corner? Oh gods, and it will be her who will have to live with it…_ He pushed on, though. He had been through _considerably_ worse than insecurities about painting, after all.

Meanwhile, Rei did not seem to have any such troubles. She just took the roller, dipped it in paint, and run it up and down the wall, over and over again. It looked all very regular, in fact very mechanical. Shinji caught himself having stopped working for almost a minute, just watching Rei working. It was almost meditative.

For quite some while, the two teenagers stood at the walls of the room, and just let their rollers go up and down the wall. Shinji smiled faintly. It was a silent solidarity, a quiet contentedness. Even Pen-Pen had his job. He waddled all along the walls with a brush in his right wing and made sure the paint reached all the way to the floor. His movements were a bit more erratic than Rei's.

"Wark!" he exclaimed, while raising his wings.

Shinji sighed but kept his smile. It was a good thing the bed had been moved to the opposite side of the room, and that the whole floor had been covered in old newspaper pages. And it was nice to watch Pen-Pen having fun with the paint.

Shinji got lost in his work, the mechanical movements of the roller for a while. He was content to not think about anything, to just work almost mindlessly. This was suddenly interrupted when he felt two arms slinging themselves around his torso from behind, and shortly after he could feel a warm body pressing against his back.

"Ah… ah… Ayana… ah… _Rei!_ " Shinji stuttered. He held his arms rigidly in the air. The roller fell from his right hand onto the newspaper pages on the ground. "What… what are you doing, Ay…Ay… Rei, what are you doing?"

"I have seen people doing this," Rei explained from behind him, in her usual soft-spoken voice. "I have never done this. I wanted to try it."

"Oh," was all that Shinji managed to answer.

"It feels nice," Rei declared. _OHH._ Shiji had to admit it _did_ feel nice, but… He gulped. His body was entirely stiff.

"T… try it?" he echoed.

"I wanted to try it with you," Rei almost whispered. "And you seemed safe."

Upon hearing that, Shinji's body relaxed. _Safe. Indeed._ This was Rei. He had nothing to fear. And surely, there was no problem with a bit of hugging, right? He liked Rei, and she, well, she seemed to find him acceptable, at least. So why not hug? It was Rei. It was safe. It was good.

He laid his hands on hers and leaned his head back against hers. As the orange late afternoon sunlight fell almost horizontally into the room, the two simply stood there, connected. Shinji's mind was entirely clear, except for a general feeling of… of closeness and of happiness. He didn't think this meant anything; it was just a moment of quiet comfort.

Finally, almost against his will, he muttered, "We should finish this, Ayanami."

And without a further comment, Rei let go him and returned to her roller. Shinji looked at her. The sudden change of pace confused him. _Weird…_ But it didn't matter. It was Rei.

* * *

Even after they had finished painting, Rei's apartment still was a small and run-down hole in what were effectively the slums of Tokyo-3. Even so, Shinji had been strangely reluctant to leave. It wasn't that he had talked much with Rei – neither of them were the type to say much – but it had been nice to be in her company. Afterwards, Shinji had felt like being suddenly cut off from something, something he didn't really have a name for. The visit to Rei's apartment had almost made Shinji forget the rest of the world, and he had found himself very reluctant to return to that normal world.

Nonetheless, a feeling of contentment had remained, and still did even now as he stirred the vegetables in the pan. Seeing Rei's sleeping room in all white… it had really given him a feeling of achievement. He still would never be able to repay what Rei was doing for him, but maybe, just maybe, he at least wasn't completely useless in that regard.

"I _thought_ this smelt too good for Misato's cooking." Shinji turned around upon hearing that grumpy voice. Asuka stood in the entrance to the kitchen, but was looking at the Wonderswan in her hands instead of him. The bandages had come off her hands the previous day, though Shinji knew there still were little marks to be seen in the centre of her palms. When he didn't respond, she peered over the gaming device's edge. "I thought it was her turn. That would have explained the delay."

Shinji rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry about that. No, it's my turn." Asuka just harrumphed and was about to turn, to go back to her room. It was a minor miracle at all to find her outside of it. "Ah… say, Asuka… did you really mean that? That my cooking smells good?"

Asuka grumbled, but then looked at him. "Better than what Misato is producing, that's for sure." Shinji smiled faintly and returned his attention to the frying pan. This probably was as good as one could get from her. After a while, she spoke up again, "How come you're so good… well, better than Misato and some other adults at it?"

Again, Shinji smiled, but then he got pensive. "Misato isn't the first adult with whom I've lived who can't really cook. My tutor was the same. So if I wanted to have proper meals…" He shrugged. "But I like it. When I cook…" He trailed off. Asuka would probably not be interested in his life stories anyway.

He hadn't looked, but apparently, Asuka had not left her position at the kitchen entrance. "Yeahh?" she drawled.

The ends of Shinji's lips curled up. "When I cook myself, I don't depend on other people's choices. I can prepare the meal just the way I like it… or I can cheer people up by making it the way _they_ like it. I… I have control, I guess."

There was a pause. Finally, Asuka commented, "You really still are a little boy, aren't you?" Shinji suddenly felt embarrassed. _I guess that did sound pathetic and overly theatrical._ But while it had been in her usual grumpy voice, it hadn't sounded hostile or anything. Patronizing, maybe, but not hostile. Still, Shinji now kept his view rigidly focused on the meal in preparation in front of him now.

...until he heard the clinkering sound of plates and cutlery being moved. He turned around and did a double take. "Ah… it's my turn, Asuka. You don't need to set the table." And honestly, the thought that she would do so voluntarily, even when she didn't need to… _Who are you and what have you done with Asuka?_

The girl glared aggressively at him, and Shinji instinctively took a step backwards, pushing against the kitchen counter. Then she just continued. Not really knowing what this supposed to mean, so did Shinji with his job.

"...I know what you mean." Asuka sounded hesitant. "About control. I thought I'd get control when I'd come to Japan."

"It isn't how you imagined it to be?" Shinji asked softly, still with his back to her.

"Just continue frying those vegetables," Asuka told him. Once again, though, it didn't sound hostile.

Unsurprisingly, after having taken care of the table, Asuka just went back to her room. _My former room…_ But it was okay. Shinji thought he and Asuka had built up a pretty good relationship, all things considered. In fact, for him, it was an odd experience to have a more than just formal relationship with cohabitants. That was what it had been like with his tutor. There was also Misato, of course, but his relationship to his current guardian was a bit more complicated. With Asuka, things were much less ambiguous – and a large part of that was because they largely didn't get into each other's hair. They could talk with each other, but most of the time Asuka was in her room, and things worked out well that way. So it was okay if his former room was used for that.

When he called for dinner, it was Asuka who first appeared again, of course with the Wonderswan in her hands. It took some minutes more for Misato to appear, and she looked sleepy and disshelved.

"Sorry," she muttered as she sat down at the table. "You woke me up from a nap." Asuka just scoffed. Misato defended herself, "Yeah, yeah, I know." She grinned. "But you gotta admit, Shinji sure took his sweet time."

"Ahhh…" Shinji voiced. It was true. His little project with Rei had delayed dinner time at home almost two hours. People had been kept waiting because of him. It was embarrassing to be reminded of that.

Misato, seemingly getting gradually more awake, raised a hand. "Hey, it's alright!" She smirked at him. It looked kinda vicious. "But you've just lost _all_ right to complain when I don't do my household tasks on time. Or sloppily. Or…"

Again, Asuka scoffed, though she didn't look up from her gaming device. "As if he would ever complain at all."

Misato sighed. "Yes. That's kinda your job. Complaining day in, day out."

Now, Asuka did put the Wonderswan down. She sounded more annoyed than usual. "I actually have reason to!"

"Oh come on!" Misato exclaimed cheerfully. "You're in Japan! Finally! I remember back in Germany you could hardly wait for it! Finally, you're getting your fights!"

Asuka just stared at her. It looked hostile. Her voice was dry. She turned her head away, looked at her hands resting on the table and answered darkly, "Yes. Yes, I do." Then she picked up the Wonderswan again.

Misato's face looked flat for a moment, but she immediately caught herself. "Don't let your meal get cold," she trilled, "Shini worked long enough on it. Isn't that right, Shinji?"

The boy shrugged his shoulders. "It's not much work for me."

"I see… And what about Rei? Was that much work?" Before Shinji could answer, Misato continued. "I just _bet_ it was enjoyable work, though."

"Enjoyable…?" Shinji echoed, then he sighed as he realized what was to come now. _Of course._ He should have seen it coming.

"You, all alone with a pretty girl, under a clever pretext…" Misato laid out the scenario.

"It was no…" Shinji began, but then stopped. There was no sense to it anyway.

Misato's grin got wide and she leaned forwards. "I mean, we all know how quiet Rei is, and you know what they say. The quiet ones are the most uninhibited ones."

Now Shinji's head got red like a tomato. It wasn't so much Misato's comment; he had gotten kind of used to her teasing. But the thing was, she had no idea how right she was. Her comment made him remember the _first_ time he had shown up in Rei's apartment.

Unfortunately for him, Misato noticed that. "Oh, it seems Rei is. I wonder how you noticed. Tell me, is she a good kisser?"

 _Kisser…?_ "Ah… ah…" Shinji stuttered. Somehow Misato had done it again. She had actually _yet again_ managed to shock him.

"Oh leave him alone." Both Shinji and Misato turned their heads in surprise. Asuka had spoken out.

 _That is… unusual._ Normally, Asuka kept to herself even at the dining table.

Unsurprisingly, it was Misato who caught herself first. "Oh, defending your boyfriend? I wonder what Rei would say about _that_."

"No," Asuka answered grumpily. "But I'm already getting sick of your jokes, and Shinji has lived here even longer. I think he has gotten enough of your nonsense."

"Is that so?" Misato asked and grinned, but then concentrated on her meal. A smile remained on her face, though.

And there was one on Shinji's as well. _Someone has spoken up for my sake._

He had Rei, and would see her again tomorrow in school. He had friends in school, if admittedly not many. He liked cooking. He liked these dinners. And it seemed he did have a grumpy older foster sister.

His smile widened. It came as a surprise, but Shinji realized he was _happy_.


	8. Mari

Rei stopped for only half a second. Most people wouldn't even have noticed any hesitation. The Commander might have, or maybe Shinji. Then she entered the class room and spoke.

"Good morning."

It was barely above a whisper, and yet it still felt very strange to her: Addressing people. Showing initiative. But it was a form of creating bonds: People reacted to her, heads turned in silent surprise.

Rei had always craved connections with people, after her life had been utterly devoid of that. In all the years in which she hadn't been allowed to leave that room far beneath the Geofront, there had only been the Commander. His visits had been rare rays of light in a life of greyness. But even upon entering the school, nothing had really changed. There had been much commotion when she had first come to this class over a year ago, but she had found herself lost, cast adrift in a sea she didn't know how to navigate. She couldn't speak up, couldn't respond to people speaking to her, couldn't _take part_ in the life of the people around her.

So very soon, her classmates had started ignoring her. She was _seeing_ all the people around her, but piloting EVA remained her only bond to the world. And now, maybe her renewed effort would fail. But ever since she had first met Shinji, and ever since she had stopped taking her meds, piloting wasn't enough anymore. She wanted those bonds in her day to day life – she wanted people to regard her, interact with her.

Those were very confusing feelings for her, and just whispering "good morning" had been difficult.

Routine took over, and she just walked towards her desk without even thinking about it. She had never thought much about _any_ of her actions; unreflecting rote had always been the norm for her. It was safer not to think; thinking meant realizing how much she lacked and what she was.

But then she stopped and turned right around, walking instead up to Asuka's desk. The European pilot was already there. She leaned her chair back against the wall so that it only stood on two legs anymore, and was looking down on the gaming device in her hands.

"Hello," Rei greeted her. She was a fellow pilot, after all.

"Hrm," Asuka merely grunted in reply.

For some seconds, Rei remained silent. She had no idea what to do now. Eventually, she defaulted to aping what she had seen other people do. That strategy had worked with Shinji, after all. "How are you?"

Asuka didn't look up from the Wonderswan. "What do you want, First?"

"I don't know," Rei answered truthfully. She didn't quite know what she had thought would happen when she had started the talk.

"Then leave me alone," Asuka told her grumpily, still not looking at her.

Rei did just that. Without saying another word, she simply turned on the spot and walked to her desk now. It used to be that with her mind not focusing on any particular matter anymore, time would just wash by her. But without Ritsuko's meds, that was no longer the case. She had no choice but to recognize the world around her: How some people were still looking at her with curiosity, how Shinji still wasn't there, how Kensuke walked up to Asuka. The redhead laid the Wonderswan on the desk and smirked at him, an expression to which the boy answered with a sort of tolerant smile.

The two seemed to talk for quite a while. It made Rei wish Shinji would finally come. It seemed she just couldn't find a connection with anybody e…

"Ah! Kitten!"

Rei turned her head around. _Somehow,_ Mari was standing right next to her, with the biggest grin on her face. Rei just kept looking right at her.

She shrugged. "Since I decided Shinji is the puppy, you get to be the other cute baby pet. Don't worry, he'll be here shortly." Then she laughed. "Oh, you're just being too obvious. Say, what are you even doing when he isn't around?"

Rei just kept looking at her. There just was nothing to answer. Most her day to day activities consisted of reading, but only school material and technical manuals, and waiting.

"Look, clearly you need something else to occupy your time," Mari continued. "And I have just the thing for you!" And without further ado, she just dropped a carrying bag onto Rei's desk. Rei peered inside… to find small booklets there. "Manga!" Mari exclaimed. "All kinds of it. Magical girl, slice of life, isekai and so on. Okay, the mecha ones are probably a bit redundant, I admit."

Rei looked at the bag again, then back to Mari. "Manga?"

"Surely you have heard of it!" Mari insisted. Rei nodded. "See! It's something to do when you're alone. Though you really should get going on Shinji, lest another girl snatches him away." Rei looked at her puzzled. "Hey, he's a looker! I think even some of the boys wouldn't say no to him."

"No to what?" Rei asked.

That finally stopped Mari's enthusiasm. She blinked. "Uh… ah… do I have to tell you the story of the birds and the bees?" she muttered. When Rei still didn't understand, she just laughed. "Ah well. Just read _some_ of the manga. They should give you a good overview."

That reassured Rei somewhat. Then again… _She has an odd gleam in her eyes._ And she was grinning in almost vicious way. Rei wondered what was up with that.

* * *

Asuka wanted to go _home._ It was bad enough how the local NERV branch had just returned to routine business after the angel attack, how her life again consisted of going to school, going to synch-tests, hearing orders, but she supposed that was at least simply part of being a pilot. Another part of that was going home after those tests, though. But no, Misato had told them to wait in the ready lounge, and that was pissing the redhead off. How did the Lieutenant Colonel dare steal her free time? So she sat in one of the armchairs, sunken deep into its cushions, playing on the Wonderswan and occasionally emitting angry grumbles.

"Ridiculous," she finally muttered through clenched teeth. "What the hell are we sitting here for?"

And if things weren't annoying enough, now Rei spoke up. The monotony in the blue-haired girl's voice could drive Asuka up the walls. "Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi ordered us..."

"Yes I know!" Asuka exploded at her fellow pilot, jumping up from the armchair and looking her right in the face. "You don't need to tell me again! But I guess for you that's all just fine and dandy, isn't it? You'll just follow every order without complaining!"

"Yes," Rei merely answered, holding Asuka's gaze with an unmoved face.

"No matter what they do," Asuka continued in a dark voice.

A uncomfortable feeling cropped up inside the redhead. A feeling of being caged, of being powerless, of just being expected to follow orders and to shut up. Just like… just like… She snarled and shook those old memories off. That was years in the past.

But she really had it to _here_ with Rei's attitude. She felt _mocked_ by it. Back at home they had all told her that the training and her role would be worth it in the end, because it would make her special. She was an elite mecha pilot, after all. But Rei… Rei just went along with everything. She didn't even _claim_ a special status. She was just a tool that went along with everything.

"Hah," Asuka scoffed. "Useless."

"Oh," Rei said softly, and then looked down. _Hah!_

"Uh, A-Asuka…" The redheard swirled her head around and now looked angrily at Shinji, who had spoken up. The boy visibly gulped. "I… ah I think you should leave Rei alone. It's not her fault we're stuck waiting here."

Asuka kept glaring at him. As usual, Shinji had just no clue at all. But she supposed that wasn't his fault. He was just somebody they had picked off the street and were giving no respect to, either. So finally, she jerked her head around defiantly, crossed her arms and said, "Okay, fiiine." She sat down again to resume her Wonderswan session.

 _Goddamn puppy boy. Why is he so close to Rei anyway? It's not like she has any sort of personality at all._ But if it made him happy, she'd leave her alone, even though that was a bit absurd. Soon, her anger was more focused on Misato again, anyway. _How can she simply make us wait here? With what justification? It's not like an angel will break through just because we stay here…_

She glanced over the edge of her Wonderswan when she heard the door to the ready room being opened. It wasn't Misato entering, though, but Mari. Asuka groaned.

"So, uh, Katsuragi said to come here?" she asked. It made Asuka look up from her gaming device again: The girl with the long twin tails sounded untypically subdued. "I hope I'm not too late."

Rei just shook her head, but Asuka commented aggressively, "Where have you been anyway?"

Mari had positively _vanished_ after the synch-test. Not that Asuka had really minded that, exactly. As usual during synch-tests, Mari had been completely out of control – she had talked, hummed, even shouted. It made concentration during the tests nearly impossible.

The girl tried a weak smile. "I didn't feel so well." And sounding somewhat like her usual upbeat self again, "Didn't want to depress anybody with that, so I stuck to myself."

"Do that more often," Asuka muttered and focused on her Wonderswan again.

That caused Mari to laugh. _Oh god, she is back to her old self._ "Does the Princess no longer require my leal service, m'lady?"

Asuka stopped. Then paused the Wonderswan. Then looked up. "Please never say that again."

Before Mari could respond, the door was swung open again. This time, Misato entered, a big grin on her face. She was followed by Kaji, who was simply rolling his eyes. The officer stopped when she saw Mari. "Ah, there you are. I was already wondering." Then she turned her attention to the other pilots. "Good news, everyone!"

Asuka groaned, both at Misato's demeanour and at Shinji and Rei looking attentively at the Operations Director.

Misato pointed to the rank insignia on her shoulders. "I got promoted! It's Colonel Katsuragi now!"

"So it _is_ in fact _Colonel_ Buxom now!" Mari exclaimed.

"Ah… con… congratulations, Misato," Shinji added in his shy way.

Rei, meanwhile, just stood at his side and looked at the newly minted Colonel. And Asuka couldn't care less. She was just happy Misato and Kaji weren't shouting at each other, as had happened that one time he had visited her appartment. _Why's that guy here, anyway?_

"I think this needs to be celebrated, don't you think?" Misato told them. "We all deserve a bit of fun, and this is a perfect opportunity!"

Asuka gripped the Wonderswan harder. _Ah._ This _is a perfect opportunity for celebration? THIS?_ She worked her mouth, but remained silent. Confirmed in her belief that people around her all sucked, she just focused on the game.

"So how about I treat you to something nice?" Misato suggested. "Let's go out to eat something together."

That made Asuka look up again. "Somewhere nice? And you're paying?" If it would get Asuka a nice meal for free, then at least all this waiting would have had a purpose.

Misato rolled her eyes but was still smiling. "Yes, Asuka, I'm paying."

The redhead jumped up from the armchair again. "Right. Let's go then."

This earned her some surprised looks; apparently people hadn't counted on such a quite reaction. Only Mari looked somewhat awkward.

"Ah… I don't think I'll come along," she declared. "I'm happy for you and all, big girl, but I'm still not feeling all too well… I think I'll just… you know… go home." And with that, she had already slipped past Misato and Kaji and was walking out of the door.

"Wait!" Misato shouted after her, into the corridor outside, but Mari was already gone. The colonel shook her head and then looked into the room again. "What's with her?"

Asuka shrugged. "Haven't you noticed? She's always like that after synch-tests. Either aggressive as hell, or awkward and avoiding everybody." Misato and Kaji exchanged a meaningful look, but Asuka didn't really care. "So, are we going now?"

They took the quickest way out of the Geofront, which still consisted of a confusing series of elevators, ridiculously oversized escalators and yet even more elevators before they reached the top level and its glittering entrance hall. There was a stark contrast between its light and shining interior design and the obvious signs of heightened security, like the card checkpoint and the armed security people standing guard. However, it hadn't been much different in Germany, so Asuka was used to that. It was just that in Germany, where they didn't have a gargantuan subterranean base for their use, everything had been at a much smaller scale.

Outside there was a small park, which meant the usual cacophony of the cicadas, which seemed to never end in Tokyo-3, was at a crescendo peak here. Sun shone from high above and dipped everything in a bright light and a gentle warmth. Coming to a land of permanent summer was like a holiday trip sometimes.

"You know, I haven't had a good steak in months," Asuka began talking. "Certainly not since coming here to Japan. You people here eat too much fish and too many vegetables, you know that. Hm, a good steak, medium-rare..."

After all, that would only be appropriate for what she had done, wouldn't it? So she was looking forward to something like that.

Kaji muttered something, though Asuka couldn't hear what, which caused Misato to break out in a giggle, as if almost against her will. Asuka sighed, but then just ignored that immature behaviour. It all didn't matter as long as she would get a good meal, preferably steak.

"Well, I don't know about that, Kaji," Asuka heard Misato laugh as the group walked along the pavement. Traffic was light in these streets, and only now and then did a car drive by. "You're really incorrigible. Just be happy that things have taken a turn for the good! All problems seem to be solved now."

Asuka furrowed her brows. It had to look like that for Misato, yes, but…

"Well, I… I'm glad you got your promotion, Misato," Shinji spoke up with some hesitation, naive fool that he was.

Asuka turned her head to see Misato's reaction and saw her shrugging her shoulders. "The Commander commended me for my plan employed against the last angel. He thought I had handled myself well. How did he put it… I handled command authority as becoming of a Colonel. Or something like that."

Asuka picked up on that. "So _I_ got you a promotion?"

That made Misato stop for a moment. "Ah… I suppose so… you, Rei and Mari."

"So…" For a moment Asuka had wanted to say 'I', but as much she disliked Rei and Mari, they unfortunately were all in this together. "... _we_ are the reason things turned out okay? Hm. I hope you take us out somewhere good then."

Misato sighed and smiled tolerantly. "Yes, Asuka."

Asuka had to give the Japanese credit for one thing, at least: They were excellent city planners. Tokyo-3 had been planned and built from scratch, and it showed. The streets formed an orderly grid, there were rarely any traffic jams, and the pavement was broad and welcoming. There even were small trees planted at the side of it. And the buildings to the other side were laid out quite cleverly, with just the right amount of little stores to catch one's interest. And of course, restaurants.

"You look like the proverbial cat that ate the canary," Kaji told Misato.

The new Colonel scoffed. "And why shouldn't I? All your worries, they were completely unfounded. Everything is going just fine, isn't it?"

Kaji worked his mouth, looked over the pilots and then sighed. "Yeah. It seems it is."

Asuka could merely roll her eyes at that. _But whatever._ She was actually nearly humming. _Hm. Steak steak steak…_

In fact, the group soon reached a restaurant that looked like a steak house. Asuka ran up to it, to look at the menu showcase next to the door.

"Oh! Look at that! Quite the menu. Hmm..."

Misato had caught up to her by now. "Also quite the prices. Ah… my poor wallet…"

"I do not eat meat." Asuka jerked her head around. Rei had spoken up. _What?_

"I'm sure they have vegetarian stuff here as well," Asuka grumbled. _Just eat the side dishes if need be._

"Yeah, but…" Misato began. It sounded a bit embarrassed. "Rei doesn't like it here, and I, uh… even with my new salary, that's a bit much..."

"Your new salary we got you," Asuka muttered.

"Asuka!" Misato sounded sterner now. "Don't make a scene. There's a nice ramen stand down the road that..."

"A _ramen_ stand?" Asuka echoed, outraged. "That is what you offer me after that fight? Some _noodles_?"

Misato crossed her arms and looked at her. "I'm sorry, but I need to watch my finances. You can take the noodles or..."

"Thanks, I pass," Asuka hissed. Now she was getting more than just annoyed – she was getting angry. _I get hurt, I suffer and SHE gets the promotion. And then we don't even get steaks? Fuck this then._ She saw no reason to put up with people around her then. "I'll take the train home."

Kaji sighed and pinched his nose bridge. Asuka, meanwhile, simply turned and stomped off. Behind her she could hear Misato: "Asuka! Where do you think you're..." but she didn't care. _What's she gonna do? Fire me?_

It was only when she heard steps running behind her that she turned her head – and stopped when saw that Shinji had run up to her. She _wanted_ to just wish him to hell with all the others, but she just… _couldn't._ He had understood her. Maybe just that one time, but that was more than could be said for, well, _anybody_ else. Except maybe Kensuke.

"Asuka..." he began, and then hesitated. "Uh… you could still have… don't you want to come and eat with us?"

 _Really?_ For a long time she just stared at him. Neither side said anything.

Then she said, "No," and just turned around again.

* * *

"See you tomorrow then, I guess."

"Yeah, till then. I'm looking forwards to beating your European ass again tomorrow."

A scoff. "I'd rather not think about what you'd do with my ass."

Kensuke could only muster a weak smile as Asuka stepped into the train. Those arcade sessions with her were really fun, but now…

Asuka had seemed kind of out of it from the moment she had arrived at the arcade. She still insisted in coming later, so she would never arrive at the same time as him. That was fine by him; if that made her feel more comfortable, he had no problem with it. He just wanted to share some fun with her. But today…

She had told him about how she and Misato had argued. Children arguing with their parents, or their guardians for that matter, that happened, but it seemed there was more to it. Something was eating Asuka up. So he had tried to be friendly to her.

And then that look in her eyes when he had told her that, hey, he couldn't buy her steak, but how about some ice cream at the café? Because she had earned that, and he had told her as much. This time that message had seemed to come through, because… she had tried to hide it, of course, as she always did, but she had definitely been surprised. Almost shocked.

And then also those stories that she had told in the café. Her training as a child. The way she had been handed over from from guardian to guardian, with all of them just being focused on making a pilot out of her. Stuff like the endurance week, where she had been pushed to her limits while being deprived of sleep. Kensuke knew why pilots had to be trained to be always ready, but she had been nine at that time.

All in all, Kensuke was beginning to get worried, and he didn't know how to deal with that. He realized he wasn't just playing video games with Asuka anymore. He was becoming… well…

...concerned for her. He just wished there was anything he could _do._ And those feelings confused him.

He trotted the station's stairs from the platforms down to the dusty street. Even here in Tokyo-3, small, barely used train stations always appeared somewhat unclean. Kensuke paid no heed to the setting sun. Instead he just kept his head down and focused on the ground in front of him. He walked the streets back to his home almost by instinct, too lost in thoughts.

This all felt _wrong_ to him on a fundamental level. All his young life he had looked to mecha anime as a source of inspiration. A mecha was nothing more than a human writ large; it was the embodiment of its pilot's fighting spirit and of humanity's determination. It was _supposed_ to be a source of heroism and valour, a force for good, and not… not…

…not _this!_

Kensuke felt his entire world turning upside down. It wasn't right that life had to be like that for EVA pilots. But what made it even worse, or even more complicated at least, was that Asuka was a genuinely fun person to be around, once one had gotten past her obvious thorns. That meant it wasn't just an abstract problem for Kensuke. It wasn't just that something _far off_ wasn't like it was supposed to be, no matter how fundamental to him. It was something that directly affected a… well, a friend.

It wasn't the first time he had been concerned for a friend, of course. The Suzuharas had gone through some considerable financial troubles a few years back, so much so that it was unknown if they would be able to stay in the city. And then, of course, Shinji… but it was different now. It was funny, considering that Asuka would most likely be able to snap his spine if she wanted to, but he felt _protective_ towards her. Protective and, and… _tender._ A feeling of tenderness.

And Kensuke was not so stupid as to not see where this was leading. But he just felt completely _overwhelmed_ by Asuka's background, by what she was telling him, by the sheer wrongness of the _real life_ mecha business. He really didn't know how to deal with it.

He passed the familiar white garden gate of his family's house without even much noticing it and sighed. He supposed he would warm up some ready-made food and then… what? Half his anime collection and half his model collection were rapidly losing its appeal. Well, he supposed he could work on some tanks. Things were more straight forward with them: You volunteered for the military and got assigned to tanks. Easy. Nothing at all like what happened with Shinji or Asuka.

The small garden with its several neatly trimmed bushes was quiet. The house itself was fairly, but not outrageously large. Its architects had tried to give it some pseudo-historical flair, by covering the wall at ground level in highly polished wood and by having a historic style roof, but this had not worked out very well. All in all, it was just a standard modern house.

Kensuke was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even notice that the lights were on. He was only thrown out of his fugue when he heard sounds coming from the kitchen. His heart suddenly began racing. Slowly, on tip toes, he began approaching that room. Part of him felt like he was in a military infiltration mission, even though this could be so much more serious. This could be…

...he breathed out when he recognized the mumbling voice from inside the kitchen. Then he stepped around the corner.

"Dad? What are you doing?"

Hideo Aida seemed to be going through several cupboards, all of them open by now. He was a small, sometimes even frail looking man with dark grey, thinning hair and round spectacles. His face usually looked friendly but, as Kensuke often secretly thought with some amusement, also frequently a bit confused.

Hideo smiled at him. "Ah, hello there, Kensuke. I just wanted to see if we still had some spices here..." A silly smile was playing around Kensuke's lips. _Why? You don't even cook._ "And I take it you were in the city again?"

Kensuke shrugged and nodded. "Was in the arcade, and then out with Asuka."

"Ah yes. 'Asuka'," Hideo echoed and snickered a bit.

That actually did get a rise out of Kensuke. "I told you, _she_ started using first names! She's just…"

Hideo smiled reassuringly. "Very European, I know."

"European," Kensuke echoed. _That isn't all of it._ He had no doubt regular European kids were different. "Yeah."

He turned around and trotted out of the kitchen. His father immediately followed and grabbed him at the shoulder. "Hey. Is something the matter?" When Kensuke didn't answer to that, he tried again, "What did you two do out in the city, anyway?"

Again, Kensuke shrugged. "Played at the arcade. Talked." He hesitated. "She had a rough life."

Hideo withdrew his arm and nodded. "You mentioned so before. It's getting to you."

"I won't..." Kensuke began with rising anger, but his father interrupted him.

"I don't say you should drop her," he told him. Then he smiled. "How about you invite her over for dinner?"

"Wh-what?" Kensuke stuttered. "I mean, it's not like that we're… you know…"

Hideo sighed. "I'll make you a deal, Kensuke. You invite her over, and I promise you it will mean absolutely nothing. No 'meeting the parents' kind of stuff, if you know what I mean. But it's clear this whole thing is bothering you. So I want to hear myself what she has to say."

"Why?" Kensuke asked.

"So I can help you better with this," Hideo told him.

"Oh," Kensuke voiced. His relationship to his father had always been good, but never particularly close. So this was unexpected. "Well, I suppose I can _ask_ her…"

Now Hideo grinned. "From what you told me, free food will be a convincing enough argument for her. And I'll cook." He hesitated. "No, I suppose I'll have someone cook." He smiled brightly. "Well, same difference! Just ask her over one of these days."

* * *

Rei had never exactly hated all the medical check-ups. However, she had never liked them, either. She just had never cared one way or the other, just as most things in her life had always simply gone past her, without ever really touching her. Her meds had always seen to it that she was dulled like that. It had been better that way. Going through life _caring_ about all the things she was missing out, caring about how she was treated, caring about her loneliness… that would have been crushing.

But those meds were wearing off now. She began to _feel_ the world again. Or, more to the point, she began to _care_ again. She had always felt when she had been pushed around roughly in a check-up, or when everyone had just treated her like a tool; it just had never mattered. Now, it began to bother her, on some level, but she had no words for it.

She was walking through the labyrinthine corridors of Terminal Dogma. The corridors were neat and well maintained, but nonetheless unusual. Illumination came from two stripes of light along the upper wall, and the corridors themselves were semi-octagonal. There were probably hundreds such corridors down here, some leading to areas nobody really knew about. Rei meanwhile just stuck strictly to her usual path.

The latest check-up had just been over, held down here in the most secret part of the NERV headquarters. And for some reason, Rei felt… annoyed. Or, no that wasn't it. Something like hurt, but that wasn't quite it, either. Ritsuko had taken a thorough look at her body, everywhere, poked with instruments everywhere. It made Rei feel like… like this made her not whole in a way. Like the perimeters of her being had been breached.

 _This is the meaning of the AT Field._

For ordinary humans, this had no physical effect, but it could have for her, if she wanted. However, she never thought in those veins. She was what was called Rei Ayanami, a catalyst for the Commander's plans. She would unfold her AT Field when it served his purposes, not when it was breached.

She was just the Commander's catalyst.

...Rei took the wrong turn at a crossing. It did not matter; she had the whole setup of the corridors memorized. She did not know why she had made this sudden turn. It was unlike her.

Ritsuko's test had not been the end of it today. Normally, such a checkup could also have been done at the regular medical wing of the facility, or at Ritsuko's office. Sometimes, people just walked in during those tests. In those cases, they didn't even regard Rei or her state anymore. That was also something that had never bothered her before. Being clothed or unclothed, it didn't matter. The drugs ensured that nothing mattered.

But now there was an annoyance inside her that she didn't quite understand herself, about how they never even _cared_ about whether _she_ might care.

After that check-up, they had just told her to go, unclothed as she was, to the next room, where already a handful of technicians had been waiting, and where she was to enter a LCL tank. And there she had remained for over two hours. Two long hours with nothing to do, with nobody talking to her, with nobody even caring how she was feeling.

Suddenly, this did bother her.

They needed her enagrams and mental routines, Rei had understood that much. She didn't know what for, and she hadn't asked; she never did. All she knew was that after two hours she was told to get out of the tank again, get dressed, and go home.

 _Why is this staying on my mind?_ She was still bothered by it. Home should have been the promise of calm and quiet, the location where she went when she had no duties. Now even that fact bothered her. _I value my apartment because I'm free of my tasks there. Yet I participate in those tasks._ What she wanted…

It was strange. Right now, she wished Shinji were here.

She heard the silent humming of electric transformers ahead. She knew by memory she would soon pass small hall important for the energy distribution down here. It was a soothing noise. _Maybe I should come here more often._ Down here, in these mazes, she wouldn't easily be found. Here, she would maybe be able to… well, to just be herself.

She stopped and blinked. There had been movement. Then she resumed her steps with determination. Nobody should be down here. She furrowed her brows as she walked around a corner… and found Mari Makinami looking up a wall. That small corridor was in fact a dead end, created only for ventilation purposes.

"Well, shit," Mari cursed. Then she turned around with a lazy smile on her face. "So it seems the kitten caught me."

Rei just stared at her. She was glad about Mari's company whenever the girl was around. Her manga had proven to be very entertaining and even educational. _But she shouldn't be here._

"So, uh… what now?" Mari asked.

"I'll report your presence," Rei told her calmly. "This area is off-limits for non-authorized personnel."

Mari's grin turned insolent. "And you are authorized?"

"Yes," Rei simply answered.

"Special, huh?" Mari asked. Rei didn't give a reply, causing the girl to sigh. "You know, we could just pretend this didn't happen, right? Have it be our little secret!" Rei simply shook her head. Mari's voice got just a hint darker in reaction. "Well. Too bad for Shinji."

This finally did get a reaction out of Rei. She did a double take and blinked several times. _Shinji…?_ She wasn't sure how he fit into the picture, but she didn't like the way Mari had talked. For several seconds, there was silence.

"I mean, he would still have you," Mari went on. "That's good. I'm kinda happy for you two." _Happy?_ Rei didn't know what she was talking about. "But I still think he would be hard hit if they take me away, don't you think? And he can make such a sad, lonely puppy."

Rei considered that. There was something to that. Shinji seemed to generally be livelier in Mari's company. And with him and Kensuke basically not talking anymore… there were still Asuka and Touji, but…

 _Ikari has done much for me. It wouldn't be right for me to hurt him._

So without further comment, Rei just turned in the spot and continued walking along the main corridor.

* * *

Mari felt a bit guilty. But just a little.

Manipulating the kitten had been easier than it should have been by right, so easy that now it almost felt like cheating to Mari. The poor blue-haired girl seemed to have truly zero experience with personal interaction. It hadn't been a fair contest, and that bothered the new pilot of Unit 00 a bit…

...but only a bit. Playing against n00bs was not as satisfying as it could be, but it was still better than not playing at all. She liked Rei, just as she liked any good riddle, and the girl was genuinely nice, but she was sure Rei would get over this episode. After all, you win some, you lose some. That was a self-explanatory truth to Mari.

With a smirk, she let her hand run over the walls of the semi-octagonal corridors. Nobody would bother her here now anymore. She could go on exploring, like she already had with the electric transformers. That was one advantage of having quarters in the Geofront: Over short or long, all of its secrets would open up to her. It was an exciting thought.

Of course, she hadn't lied: If Section 2 found out, she would be taken away. It was very possible that nobody would ever hear of her again then. However, that didn't bother her greatly. It was like EVA fights: There would have been no thrill if there were nothing at stake. Life was a big game, and one always had to try and win – and if one lost, well… _You win some, you lose some._

Anything was better than her previous life.

Right now she was living her life at the fullest. A tease in school, an EVA pilot in the afternoon, and at nights, well… there was also her _other_ mission. Not that she really cared for NERV Europe or NERV Russia or NERV Japan, or the IPEA, or for any of the countless other UN agencies vying for power. It didn't matter who would eventually come out on top. Only the challenge mattered. The game.

She began humming. " _You did what you did to me, now it's history I see..._ "

The title of the song made her grin smugly. She turned around a corner…

...and jumped back. The man with the un-ironed shirt, beard stubbles and cigarette in his mouth could grin just as smugly as she.

"Hello there, Mari," he greeted her.

"Ryoji Kaji, isn't it?" she remembered. He nodded. She smiled at him awkwardly. "Eheheh. Really much traffic down here today…"

She doubted she could lull him in the same way she had Rei. Adrenaline began rushing through her body, and she lowered her body stance. _Fight or flight…_ She would either hit him right in the face and run, or just start by running. Now her grin became predatory. _Let's see how good I am at that._

Kaji merely raised an eyebrow. "You seem stressed." He took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out smoke.

"Yeah, well…" Mari began, ready to turn and run.

However, she stopped when Kaji said, "And I merely wanted to talk." She looked at him, and he grinned again. "That would be quite the twist in the story, wouldn't it be?"

Mari grinned back. "Quite the twist indeed."

It was clear he had her figured out, but it didn't matter. _Talking, eh?_ Now Mari was really interested where that would lead. After all, she didn't really care about her employers. Only the game mattered.


	9. Asuka

Air bubbles floated upwards in the LCL as Asuka breathed out a sigh. At least she was in Unit 02 again – _her_ Evangelion. The one place where nobody could touch her. She had always felt safe in here. No matter what instructors would yell at her, no matter what new guardian would await her at home, hell, no matter where she would live this year or month… none of that could reach her in her entry plug. The lesson Asuka had taken from her fourteen years of life was that people sucked, that everyone only ever looked out for their own interests, that people only ever made demands of each other: "Protect me!", "Fight for me!", "Suffer for me!". But here in her Evangelion she was safe from them all.

What was more, the Evangelion was maybe the one thing, the _only_ thing, she had for herself. An 80m combat machine of several thousands tons, and it was hers. No matter where she moved, no matter what they got her or took away again from her, she always had had this unit. Nobody else had ever used it, and she had never used another unit. She was _the_ pilot of Unit 02. Nobody could take that away from her.

So at least there was that. However, overall, she didn't want to be here, in the forests some thirty to fifty kilometres north of Tokyo-3. She wanted to be at home and play video games... or maybe play video games with Kensuke. It was bad enough she had to go to school everyday, but today, Misato had picked her up afterwards, and Mari as well. It wasn't even a regular synchtest, it was some bullshit special exercise that was eating up her free time, and as usual, she hadn't even gotten any prior notice.

Maybe, before coming to Japan, she would have been more enthusiastic about a training exercise against another Evangelion, testing new prototype weapons. But it seemed nobody here _cared_ that she piloted, that she was saving them all, so why should she? It was something she had done all her life, and if told she had extra training she would do it, but… right now, she didn't feel very enthusiastic about it.

Oh well. At least she would get to hit that smug four-eyes in the face.

She could see the forests all around her, as if she were in a fully transparent cockpit. Even the largest trees only reached to 'her' waist. Even so, few would see this exercise: This was a mountainous area with no human settlement for several kilometres in all directions. Which, for a densely populated country like Japan, made this the middle of nowhere.

Currently, she was standing in a clearing… kinda. Basically, her EVA's feet entirely _filled out_ a clearing. Opposite of her, deeper into the woods, she could see the blue paint and cyclopean face of Unit 00. There was something on the shoulders the opposing Evangelion, and also something on the left arm, and in its right hand, it held a stick with a large, EVA scale chain attached – a morning star.

EVA-02 had this something on the shoulders and the left arm as well. Meanwhile, Asuka wasn't quite clear what _she_ held in her right hand.

"Alright, ladies." This was Misato over the comms. The newly minted Colonel was in one of NERV's high tech command trucks, which had been parked a safe distance away, to ensure that she and the 'bridge bunnies' would not get accidentally trampled in the bout. That Asuka and Mari surely would get some bruises, that was apparently considered acceptable. "I have come with some surprise presents for you!"

Asuka made a face. It _would_ in fact be like the Colonel to consider more tools for Asuka to do her job with as 'presents'. It was another thing that most likely wouldn't have bothered a year ago – she would even have agreed back then. But now…

"Ritsu has been busy," Misato continued. "And with her help, we'll use the angels' own weapons against them! You'll note that your Evangelions are carrying something on their arms. These are unfoldable sh..."

Another voice cut in, Ritsuko's: "It is the _Multivariable Metamolecular Defence and Deflection Engine 'Aegis'_!" It sounded thunderous.

Mari laughed. "A shield, in other words."

"Reverse engineered from the angel designated Ramiel," Ritsuko specified. "It's 'potentially multi-formed' - that is, it can take on several geometric shapes, just like that angel could. It is merely a question of willpower. Try it some."

Asuka furrowed her eyes, then raised the EVA's left arm and looked at it. What looked like a blue disk was attached to it. She concentrated… and the EVA stumbled back. Suddenly, the disk had expanded to become a large, weird, multi-corner _something…_ like a circle of different sized rays meeting in the middle.

" _Was zur Hölle…"_

She tried it again, this time imagining something more solid, something more coherent. There was a screeching sound, and suddenly the blue _thing_ was now an orderly square.

" _Hammer!"_

Now that was something neat. A physical shield she could shape whatever way she wanted. She looked at Unit 00… and began to snicker maliciously when she saw Mari's shield had transformed into an irregular triangle, with one point stuck in the ground.

"Hey look!" Mari exclaimed. "It's a spade as well!" And in an added mumble: "Whether I want that or not."

"So what's the stuff on our shoulders?" Asuka asked.

Misato tried to answer, "Those are energy wh…"

"Those are your new Flexicoherent Plasamakinetic Shortrange Sidearms!" Ritsuko announced.

Misato's annoyed grunt was audible over the comms. " _As I was saying…_ energy whips. Range of thirty to forty metres, depending. Not very strong, but might be enough to distract and irate the enemy."

Asuka wiggled her shoulders… and indeed, something that looked like whips of pure light unfolded from it. She wiggled some more, and the whips sprung into action, cutting over the forest, and shearing off several tree tops

" _Not very strong_ , huh?" Asuka muttered.

"Now, as for your main weapon, Asuka," Misato spoke up again. The redhead looked to her EVA's right hand. The thing in there looked like a mix of a baton and a short staff with a sword guard. "Concentrate on it and shake it a bit."

Asuka scoffed at being addressed in such a patronizing way, but did as she was told. Suddenly, that _thing_ opened up. It seemed to consist of several small parts, tubes, gears, which now re-arranged themselves… and it became a sword. Another shake, and it became a real staff. Another shake, another mechanical recombination, it was a naginata.

"Like… like…" Asuka stuttered.

"Like the angel you fought in the air, Asuka," Misato confirmed. "Yes. It's…" She stopped herself, and then sighed. "Yes, okay do your thing, Ritsu."

"My… oh," Ritsuko spoke up now. "Yes. This is the..." There was an audible pause for effect. " _Submechanically Reinversible Multimartial Utility Staff 'Aaron'!_ "

Asuka rolled her eyes.

"So what did I get, Blondie?" Mari exclaimed.

"Oh, you got a morning star and a boomerang" Ritsuko explained matter-of-factly. Silence followed that announcement. " _What?_ That's what they are!"

"It's… long" Mari stated about the morning star. It certainly was. The spiked ball of iron at the other end of the chain lay more than 80m away, an EVA's length.

"The specific form of the chain and the ball make it particularly susceptible to AT Fields," Ritsuko explained. "Use Unit 00's AT Fields, and you can control it. You've gotten extra training in AT Field use, haven't you?"

"You could say that," Mari muttered. That was unlike her.

"The boomerang is in your left shoulder pylon," Misato added. "It's unfoldable, as it works along the same principles as Asuka's… uh… swordclubsaberspearstaff thing."

"Alright!" Mari announced enthusiastically. "Let's rock'n'roll!" That was more like her.

"Remember to play nice, girls!" Misator reminded them. "This is just to test the new equipment. You can start at my command. Three… two… one… _go!_ "

However, neither side moved. The two Evangelions stood there, in defensive positions, about half a kilometre apart, looking at each other, daring each other to make the first move. Eyes still fixated on Unit 00, Unit 02 shook its right hand, and the object there reconfigured into a naginata. Asuka figured she would need that reach against the morning star.

Meanwhile, Unit 00, also still looking straight ahead at its counterpart, threw the morning star's iron ball into the air and kept it circulating there. It rotated over the cyclopean head, nearly a hundred metre above it, faster and faster and faster, but in a surprisingly small circle. It shouldn't have stayed up at the end of such a long chain, but it _did._

Asuka eyed the iron ball carefully. Any hit by it would probably be very painful. For a moment, everything seemed to stand still except the morning star… and then it slightly changed its motion. Immediately, Unit 02 began sprinting. The morning star came down on it from above, but Asuka ran around it in a zig-zag.

Mari swung low – Asuka jumped over the chain. Mari swung again – the iron ball landed right next to Unit 02's feet, splintering a dozen trees, while the Evangelion jumped forward. Mari pushed the ball right at Unit 02 – Asuka stepped aside, the spikes of the ball _just so_ grazing the Evangelion's chest.

"Urrrgh…" It still hurt.

But then she leaped forwards again, bursting all trees in her path, lowered the naginata and _swung_. The naginata's blade connected and Unit 00 was thrown to the side.

"Hah!"

Again Asuka shook Unit 02's hand, and with a lot of mechanical noises, the naginata transformed into a solid club. The Evangelion ran to its prone counterpart and raised the club…

...when suddenly a chain swung itself around it, including the raised arm.

"I _have_ you, Princess!" Mari taunted and then laughed manically.

Asuka wiggled in her entry plug, causing her Evangelion to do the same. Unit 02 strained against the chains. "We'll… see…" Asuka managed to push out.

Again, gears and clicking sound. The club became an _incredibly_ lean spear with a very sharp point. It easily slid through the chains and towards the still prone Unit 00.

Mari rolled around on the ground, evading the spear, but this meant letting go of all tension in her chain. Unit 02 unentangled itself and stepped forward again. Mari tried to retreat on her back, but Asuka was upon her. Unit 02 simply passed by the spear stuck in the ground, too focused on Mari. Asuka grinned. Her Evangelion raised its leg to _stomp_ its counter-part…

…and suddenly Asuka saw blue and her Evangelion fell over. She didn't even think – she simply started her Ninlil jumpjets in a controlled manner to get to her feet again and grabbed the spear, now holding it in a defensive position.

"Forgot our new toys?" Mari taunted. Unit 00 was on its feet again – with its shield extended, and in a diagonal position. Asuka cursed mentally. Her own Evangelion must have stepped on that diagonal area.

The two units now circled around each other, crushing trees, bushes and even small dirt hills beneath them. But it wasn't like Asuka to just sit and wait. On her left arm, the blue disk grew in size until it had become a decent roundshield, while tiny gears and tubes turned the naginata into an impressively long saber.

Then Asuka charged forwards again.

Unit 02 jumped, whirled around, made a saldo. Metall hit metall as the iron ball crushed against the sabre blade, getting deflected by it. Metal hit… _whatever_ when Asuka used her shield to ward off another blow. And then the saber struck at Unit 00…

...but Mari's Evangelion wasn't there anymore. One flip backwards, another flip backwards, a third flip backwards. It was an impressive display of control. And then the iron ball came flying again…

...but by the time it reached Asuka, her weapon was a staff again. She struck the chain with it, closed her eyes, concentrated on her unit's AT Field… and then the chain twirled around the staff. Asuka opened her eyes again, grinned a predator's grin and _pulled_.

Both girls activated their energy whips at the same time. A lash landed right across Unit 02's face.

" _Aahhhh..."_ It hurt. It really was like getting a whip lash.

Another lash. And another one. Asuka was getting _whipped_ , and she felt every lash.

 _..."Mama! It hurts!" A six year old girl, in her first combat training… the man who was supposed to watch over her all cold and stony..._

Asuka snarled and shook off the memory. _He is gone! Long gone out of my life!_ And she would be damned if she lost here. Mari might remember their new toys better, but Asuka remembered that her Evangelion was more than just fancy equipment. She pulled Unit 00 even closer… and rammed her own Evangelion's knee into its stomach.

" _Urrrgh_." Mari's grunt was audible over the comms.

The chain became limp again. And suddenly there was a _staccato_ of whip lashes on Asuka's shoulder.

" _Fuck fuck fuck fuck"_ Asuka cursed. She didn't want to, but her Evangelion let go of Unit 00. And when she could orientate herself again, the blue machine was nowhere to be seen.

"Coward," Asuka scoffed. She looked at the ground in front of her, and saw the severed end of Unit 00's umbilical cable. "Well, her energy will soon run out."

"We have supply trucks dispersed all over the area," Misato announced cheerfully.

... _seriously?_ Asuka had enough of that. Her face, her back, her shoulders _stung_ , and that just because Misato had set her and Mari against each other. This wasn't even an angel. The city or the world weren't at stake. Yes, okay, maybe the new weapons did need to get tested, but why should she let herself be hurt in the process?

 _...it is really like back then..._ She had thought she had buried all her memories, become a successful EVA pilot, but… _it never ends..._

"Really, Misato? I want to go home," Asuka requested. "I just got the crap whipped out of me."

"We still have no data on the boomerang," the Colonel reminded her.

"So this only ends once I have another bruise?" Asuka complained.

"Asuka, this is important. These are the weapons you will use to defend against the angels," Misato argued.

Asuka scowled. No end to the training exercise then. Very well. She ripped her own umbilical cord out – this would soon be over one way or the other. Then she started her jump engines.

It was impossible to hide an 80m mechanical giant from an aerial view.

" _Hab dich, Brillenschlange…"_

Unit 00 was literally crawling through the woodworks, almost completely prone so that some high trees at a mountain slope would cover it. Asuka was unsure what Mari even thought to achieve with it.

It didn't matter. Unit 02's jump engines fired again, and the Evangelion darted towards said slope. With a loud thunder, its s boots touched ground again, raising dust and soil into the air.

Unit 00 was not far away, down on one knee and looking down… but then its head rose, and Asuka could have _sworn_ its single eye lit up.

"Surpriiise!" Mari exclaimed… and threw her boomerang.

Instinctively, Asuka raised her hand… and the boomerang crashed against an octagonal field of yellow light, and then flittered away.

That was an obvious downside of the morning star. Mari had to spend so much of her AT Field's strength on controlling it that she couldn't completely nullify's _Asuka's_ AT Field.

"That was your surprise?" Asuka taunted.

"Not quite…" Mari answered. She paused. " _That_ is."

"What…" But Asuka didn't get to end the sentence. Something hit her back, full force. She groaned in pain… and Unit 02 fell over.

In one smooth movement, Unit 00 got up from the ground and darted forward, catching the returning boomerang on the way. Before Asuka could react, a heavy boot landed on her weapon hand.

"It's a boomerang, silly!" Mari laughed. "What did you _think_ it would do? Well, time to end th…"

Asuka _screamed._

With an even mightier roar, the Ninlil jump engines started again. Unit 02 rose form the ground and rammed against its counterpart full force. Again Asuka screamed as she felt something _snap_ in her right arm as it was violently pulled free of the boot, but she ignored it. Soon, both Evangelions had each other in a chokehold now, but the jump engines _still_ continued to fire. Trails several metres deep were cut into the dirt, but Unit 00 was pushed more and more against the slope… until finally, Asuka's Evangelion was on top of it.

" _Now_ it is ended," she declared under heavy breath and raised her weapon.

Mari just laughed. "Seems like".

…and she powered down her Evangelion.

* * *

Kensuke felt nervous. It was all so silly, really. He and Asuka had hit the arcade near-daily for several weeks now. Even when they had gone to a restaurant together, it had all stayed relaxed and casual. And now his father just _had_ to go and make this big thing out of it, having him invite Asuka over for dinner.

It wasn't like Kensuke was opposed to the whole affair. He had been worrying about Asuka for some time now, and had no idea of his own how to deal with her issues. If there was _any_ chance his father did, well, then he would deal with this dinner. That didn't make the prospect any less awkward, though.

So now, he just sat at the made table, drummed his fingers on it, and now and then looked at his watch.

"Hm, I hope she comes in time," he heard his father mutter from the dining room's door. "The food can be warmed up again, but I think it always loses some flavour when you have to do that, don't you think, Kensuke?"

The boy smiled drily, his face still turned away from his father. The attempt to distract him was really damn blatant. "I think she'll agree to everything as long as it is plentiful and not ready made."

Kensuke's father chuckled. "Ah, the hidden advantages of youth. Enjoy your growth spurts while you can, afterwards it gets more difficult to control your weight."

Kensuke's dry grin remained. That was just _such_ an Aida senior thing to say.

He darted up when he heard the doorbell. Now it was his father's turn to grin. _Damn it._ Kensuke cursed his lapse in self-control, then spurted to the door to open it.

Asuka was wearing her usual grumpy face… and a cast around the middle of her right lower arm. Before Kensuke could comment, she spoke up darkly, "Training accident. Now, what's for food?"

"Ah… yeah… right… it's all prepared," Kensuke stuttered and stepped away from the door. "Come in."

Asuka scoffed, but did so. Her mood seemed to be extraordinarily sour today.

"Welcome," Kensuke's father greeted her with a benevolent smile on his face. "My son told me of you. Nice to meet you, Asuka."

Asuka just nodded curtly, and then sat down at the table.

Kensuke and his father did as well. "A training accident?" the elder Aida inquired.

Asuka shrugged. "EVA versus EVA training." She nodded towards the food. "May I…?"

Aida senior nodded and smiled broadly at her. "Help yourself. I think we can consider that dinner started." He began placing food on his plate. Immediately, so did Asuka as well, at a rapid pace - or at least, as rapid as her bandaged arm allowed.

Only Kensuke wasn't. "You fought another EVA?" He couldn't help it; it just tickled his 'ohmygod _coool_ ' reflex. But, after all he had learned about Asuka in these past weeks… "That seems…" _Making them fight each other?_ On the one hand, it was cool, on the other it was… troubling.

"Misato decided we needed some extra live action training," Asuka explained. "Kinda sucks, especially how it ended."

There it was again, Asuka's attitude. Yeah, she complained, but only in the way one would complain about an extra chore at home or extra homework from school, a sort of 'what can you do?'.

Kensuke's father seemed less disturbed. He simply asked, "What happened?"

"I probably shouldn't get into the specifics," Asuka said. "Confidentiality issues."

"So you get hurt because of their orders and you can't even tell why?" Kensuke exclaimed.

It wasn't that he, the military nerd, didn't understand confidentiality. And normally he would have agreed with the importance of it. But this wasn't just an abstract concern any longer. This was… well… _Asuka._ He felt like he had a personal connection here.

"That's how it works," Asuka merely replied and began eating.

An awkward silence followed that. Hesitantly, Kensuke turned the attention to his plate as well. He didn't have much of an appetite, though. The food was fantastic - a wide variety of meat, vegetables, rice… But Kensuke was a picky eater at the best of times, and now, well… there was other stuff on his mind.

Finally, even Asuka couldn't seem to stand the silence any longer. "It was a weapons test," she grumbled. "Can't say what, but…"

She told them about her day. Kensuke had entirely stopped eating, and the grip around his chopsticks got a bit tighter. After Asuka had ended, the awkward silence returned.

It was Kensuke who finally blurted out, "Why didn't you just stop?"

"What?" Asuka countered.

"After Makinami had run away," Kensuke explained his position. "You wanted to stop. I… I don't think they should then _make_ you continue."

After all, piloting mecha was awesome! Or so Kensuke had always thought. Mecha pilots were supposed to be eager heroes full of drive and determination, who struck out on their own and fought for what they believed in. Mecha pilots were supposed to do this out of their ow will and determination - and most importantly, nobody was supposed to tell them what to do.

Asuka looked at him oddly. "The training wasn't over yet. There wasn't enough data on the weapons yet."

"And they wanted you to get beaten up to get that data," Kensuke replied through clenched teeth. "I think that would've given you a right to just end it. For… for… self-protection!"

Now Asuka furrowed her brows and looked down at her plate.

Kensuke's father smiled. It always looked a bit goofy, Kensuke found, but then again, Aida senior usually did mean well. "I think Asuka is used to thinking in different terms, aren't you, Asuka?"

Asuka rested her head on one hand and picked at the food with the other. "I mean… yeah. You can't just end a training in the middle of it just because you want to go home. I mean, I'm sure the others want as well, but there's a job to be done."

Kensuke breathed in to comment, but a short signal from his father, just an ever so slightly raised hand, made him stop. He furrowed his brows instead.

"A job, indeed," Aida senior answered kindly. "You've been in that business for a while, haven't you?"

Asuka just shrugged, but then answered. "Since I've been four."

Kensuke's father chuckled. "Sorry. I'm just imagining a little redheaded girl, inside such a big robot." Asuka just shrugged again. "Ah, again, sorry. An old man's thoughts sometimes go to strange places. You have to admit, it is a bit unusual."

"It is special," Asuka responded, and it sounded defiant, almost hostile. "Except for two months, there have only ever been three EVA pilots in total. And I am one of them."

"Ah, that's true," Kensuke's father admitted. "You do very important work, and that at your age. Being selected as a pilot must have been quite exciting for young you." Asuka… flinched. She didn't say anything, but just sat there, a brooding expression on her face. "I bet you were all fire and spirit," Aida senior continued jovially. "Or were you a little bit nervous, maybe?" He winked at her.

"I wasn't…" Asuka protested, but then cut herself off and returned to brooding.

Kensuke's father raised his hands. "Ah sorry, I shouldn't have implied anything. So, fire and spirit then?"

Asuka frowned. "Once I hadn't gotten used to it all. I didn't realize immediately how special this all made me. At first…" She stopped, even biting herself on the lip.

"I mean…" Kensuke now spoke up slowly. "It was kinda difficult for me when I first entered school. And that was just school, and I was six." He glanced sideways to Asuka.

"Isn't anything new difficult for children?" Asuka answered, almost in a muttering tone.

"Well, I didn't get a broken or sprained arm in all my time at school," Kensuke pointed out.

"That happens," Asuka grumbled. "It sucks, but…"

"Not to most kids it doesn't," Kensuke's father stated quietly.

Silence followed. Finally, Kensuke felt like he _had_ to say something. "I… When I first heard the UN might have _actual, real mecha_ I got so excited. Even more so when I found out some where stationed here, in Tokyo-3. I could maybe see mecha! Or even meet mecha pilots! I… I could…" He shook his head. "That's what I always dreamed of. Being a mecha pilot. I always imagined it as so grand and magnificent… the conductor of a near-invincible multi-thousand ton war machine, the strongest on Earth. I would be able to show my determination, to have a purpose, to do my part…"

"Yeah, that's what they've always told me," Asuka said in a hollow voice. "From the start."

"I don't really believe that anymore," Kensuke stated. "And… neither do you?"

Asuka shook her head. "It was… it was…"

" _What_ was it like?" Kensuke now almost pleaded.

"You wanna know?" Asuka shot back. "My first tests inside the Evangelion itself? They had to calibrate the synchtest, after all. To know what readings meant a higher synch-rate. How do you think they could figure that out?"

Asuka's right hand gripped the back of chair hard, and for a moment, Kensuke thought she would stand up and run out. But then she breathed out and began to talk, in a low, almost hollow voice. How it had sounded exciting to her at first as well, but how that excitement had soon faded after weeks had turned to months had turned to years of just training. Now, it had just become normalcy for her. How she had been a four year old girl, surrounded by people and machines and concepts she didn't understand. And, how at age 6, they had started combat training.

They had to be ready, after all. They knew the angels were coming.

She had refused to go on at first. It had _hurt_ , after all. They couldn't risk her developing the wrong instincts for a battle, so they had left the pain feedback intact, if dialed down. But that had only let to her being grounded, and nobody speaking with her. As Asuka saw it now, that was just necessary discipline for a child - children often don't do what they're supposed to do, after all.

So, really, how else to make sure a literally irreplaceable child pilot would do what was necessary?

"My first guardian, he..." Her voice became _ver_ y low. "He made sure I went through with everything."

She told about the constantly changing guardians and instructors. She had a new guardian every year, sometimes every half year. Again, that made sense, as far as Asuka was concerned: Given the angel threat to the world, they _had_ to prioritize getting her ready for combat. The most important thing was that she could pilot and fight; other issues, like attachment and feelings just weren't as important, what with the world at stake.

So they used whatever means necessary to achieve that goal. Asuka got very sparse with words at this part, but apparently some instructors were worse than others. Some would only shook their head in disappointment; others would shout at an elementary school girl.

Some events Asuka told basically by the by, like the time they tested new plugsuit features. They had to make sure the emergency defibrillators would work, so they induced a cardiac arrest in the young girl. Asuka now just passed over that quickly. Or the one time they tested her pain tolerance. Just a necessary medical test…

Kensuke just sat there, the food on his plate getting cold, and listened intensely. Repeatedly, his hands formed into fists, but he didn't comment.

There was only one time where Asuka showed any reaction, when she told of a special synchtest just over a year ago. She had been thoroughly cleaned at the NERV facility… and _then_ was told that she had to do the test stark naked. All protests of her had been swept aside, it had just been expected that she do that, no matter her own feelings: There had been no talk of this before, no apology about how it could make her uncomfortable, just an order. And while Asuka didn't say much, it was quite clear she had been embarrassed, probably humiliated.

At first, Kensuke had gone slightly red hearing the story, but then his uneasiness about the tale had won the upper hand: How the people at NERV apparently didn't even care about how she felt, about her sensibilities. And Misato had already been her guardian at that time, for a while.

The people at NERV had also always told Asuka that this all made her special, and the girl had believed them. Whatever they were doing to her, it had a _purpose_ , and that purpose _elevated_ her. She had looked forward to the day when she would finally get to fight the angels - when all that hard training would pay off. She was special, and the world would see it. Of course, what had actually happened was that she had been treated like just another schoolgirl in Japan, and fighting the angels? Well, that was taken for granted, no special remark about it necessary.

Kensuke's food had gone cold on his plate, and so had Asuka's. She took a bite from her chopsticks, and then furrowed her brows. "Well, shit. Seems like I missed this chance for food."

Again, Kensuke's father smiled at her. "It's easy to rewarm food, and we have large doggy bags, don't we, Kensuke?" Unsure what else to do, Kensuke just nodded awkwardly. "Just make sure Colonel Katsuragi doesn't steal this from you." He winked at Asuka.

"That would be just like her," Asuka muttered.

Kensuke's father chuckled. "Remind her that she doesn't exactly have an abundance of pilots."

Asuka scoffed, half-amused. "I guess I could do that."

"Then let's pack up," Aida senior suggested. Everybody stood up. "Oh, and Asuka - if there is more to tell…" He searched for something in his pocket and then got a business card from there. "Just call me at any time."

Asuka held the card with both hands and looked at it, muttering what was written there: "Vice Director… Business Section… _Asahi Shimbun Media Group_ …"

* * *

NERV headquarters was a place full of uncomfortable, sometimes even painful memories for Shinji. The spacious architecture or the light-filled halls presented a pleasant image, but that was just an illusion, smoke and mirrors, a camouflage. It hid the facility's true purpose, which had nothing pleasant at all about it.

And yet…

The facility had lost much of its sting. Somewhen during the last weeks, coming here had become not so terrible anymore. Shinji simply felt freer now. He went to the synch-tests, but that didn't mean he would have to face angels upon their arrival. And without this sword of Damocles constantly hanging over his head, the routine had become comfortably familiar, even friendly. It was somewhat like a school club. Sure, lying in LCL for an hour doing nothing was still boring. They still demanded his time and took him giving it for granted. But it wasn't so bad going somewhere together with Asuka, it wasn't so terrible to meet Mari, even though she kept acting oddly during synchtests, and it _definitely_ wasn't horrible at all to meet Rei.

The way Shinji began feeling about her, everywhere was a good place with the blue-haired girl around.

The synchtest had just ended, and they all were leaving their entry-plugs, climbing down ladders to the gangways spanning over the coolant liquid in the EVA cages. There was a sharp aroma in the air, but Shinji hardly noticed that anymore. Instead his eyes were fixated on the ladder next to his: Rei's lithe figure climbing down, its curves basically not covered at all by the tight plugsuit.

She wasn't the most expressive person. Even now, she hardly smiled. But just seeing the ends of her lips tugging upwards made Shinji glad. It reminded him of the aftermath of the Ramiel fight, her smile, small but radiant. And moments like now, when they both hit the gangway and her face every so slightly brightened up in reaction to seeing _him…_ it made him feel all fluttery.

Not that it _meant_ anything, mind. Shinji was just glad to be around Rei whenever he could; he would absolutely not want to ruin this wonderful, brilliant bond by pushing for more. It was bad enough how he thought about Rei's body at times. She was a wonderful _person_ , and not an object for half-formed desires in his mind. She was his harbour of calm and safety, and he worried _that_ already could mean he was using her too much.

But still, it was wonderful to be around her.

Neither of them said much, really. They didn't _need_ to. Both were content with harmonious silence next to each other. And it wasn't like they were _entirely_ silent. Shinji asked her about her school day, and Rei asked him if the test had been okay. He blinked when he heard this. _She is still concerned about me._ Realizing that, it felt like something in his chest was about to burst.

The huge hall that formed the EVA cages was completely silent besides the sound of steps on metal… and Asuka's annoyed grunts as Mari was holding her up with something or other. The bespectacled girl was always slightly unhinged during and after synchtests, and Shinji was glad that right now he wasn't the target of her eccentric behaviour. He liked Mari, he just… liked walking in peace next to Rei more. And this ensured that both Mari and Asuka were occupied.

Shinji and Rei walked together to the lockerrooms and parted ways there. Shinji's thoughts lingered only for the barest moment on Rei in the girls' room. He sighed. It wasn't like it _wasn't_ a beautiful thought. Rei had grace and serenity and a calm beauty, elegant curves and pristine, fair skin. It was just… inappropriate

It didn't matter. He was used to pushing such thoughts out of his mind. As he first undressed and then put on his normal clothes, he just hoped he could spend some more time with Rei. He still felt good.

...and then he left the locker room and saw Misato outside waiting for him. Her arms were crossed, her right hand cupping her left elbow.

"The Commander wants to see you, Shinji."

And just like that, Shinji's happy little bubble burst. Suddenly, NERV headquarters with its multitude of corridors and rooms was just as he initially remembered it: Oppressive, forbidding, ominous. _My father…_

On some level, Shinji knew this was an overreaction. Most likely, his father just wanted a status report or something of the sort. But as he trotted alongside Misato, all stiff and tense, he felt a deep anxiety growing inside him. He didn't even pay attention to where he was going; meeting his father loomed too large in his mind. He always had wanted his attention, but whenever he had gotten it, something bad had happened. It made Shinji feel like he was four again: A child who doesn't know what he wants, and who is just powerless, so utterly powerless.

The Commander's office fit to that feeling. A giant, barely lit room with arcane symbols on the ceiling, and a desk that seemed a mile away from the entrance. Shinji felt like he didn't belong here. For a moment he just wanted to turn away and run, but he felt Misato's hand on his shoulder. The whole situation still appeared overwhelming to him, though.

His father sat behind the desk, his arms resting on it and his hands crossed in front of his face. Shinji looked away.

Next to the Commander stood Vice Commander Fuyutsuki. It was he who spoke. "I'm glad you could come so quickly, Shinji." He nodded curtly in greeting towards Misato. "Colonel Katsuragi. The Commander and I have decided on certain changes in the NERV command structure and Operations division you need to be aware of."

Shinj, still not really looking in front of him, furrowed his brows. Since when was he informed of anything going on here? Usually, any times he got news, it was bad news. Nearly always, any change was a change for the worse. His anxiety grew.

"The Operations Division has run very smoothly during the last few battles, in no small part due to your personal efforts, Colonel Katsuragi," the Vice Commander continued. "Therefore, the Commander and I do not see the necessity for fallback options anymore. We have thus decided to streamline our structures."

Shinji didn't understand. Neither did Misato, or so it seemed. There was a silence.

"Starting next month, the position of 'reserve pilot' will be abolished," Fuyustuki explained.

 _What?_ Shinji couldn't even process what that meant.

"But, Vice Commander..." Misato began to protest.

Speaking calmly over her protests, Fuyutsuki continued, "Either the Fourth Child becomes a regular pilot again, to be deployed regularly in battles as Command sees fit..." He hesitated slightly.

"...or he will have to leave Tokyo-3," Gendo finished the sentence from behind his stapled fingers, his voice low and dark.

 _What?_ Shinji took a step back and raised an arm, as if somebody were to strike him. And it did feel that way. _But… what about Touji? Asuka? Mari? What about Rei?_

"Is that really necessary?" Misato asked, almost pleaded.

"There will be no further special treatment for Shinji," the Commander explained. "If we can't deploy him in battle, he is of no use to us. In which case, he has no business being in this city."

"I could..." Misato began, but was cut off again.

"Colonel!" Fuyutsuki cut in. "You are aware of the special authority NERV has over Tokyo-3. This is Shinji's decision to make. Either he will be a regular pilot again, without special treatment… or he will have to leave the city."

 _Why…_ Shinji couldn't voice this, but that thought ran in his head. _Why this? Why now?_ He didn't want to leave, didn't want to be all alone again, but…

 _I'll lose Rei. I'll either have to face the angels again, or I'll lose Rei._


End file.
